Yes, I'm working on it now, among other things. It's nice to hear you like the idea.

The flash stuff will be handled in a way that graphic novels have been effectively conveying dramatic action for a long time. Through sequential art.

A number of people seem to have trouble with the concept of a book adaptation, almost to the point where the idea of the object existing somewhere in reality offends them. It seems some would prefer it not exist at all, even if it means denying it from those who really want a book adaptation despite the obvious cross-media challenges. If we were all supremely literal people by equal measure, we would all demand a DVD treatment or something similar, with all the music and animation intact as it is on the web. However, some people like books. They like a physical, tactile object that you can take off a shelf, flip through and read, without turning something on or glaring at a screen for hours. This is why books still exist, and why we haven't decided to burn down our libraries quite yet.

Taking such strong issue with adaptation from one form of media to another is puzzling to me. It happens all the time. Books are adapted to movies, and back. Musicals become films, films become games, games become comics. Stories have many ways they can be told. If someone were going to make a graphic novel out of a movie, imagine how absurd it would be to ask the artist, "Oh yeah? How are you going to handle all the moving around bits? Like, all that motion that happens in movies? Oh, what about the MUSIC??" The objection is actually profoundly idiotic, but we don't actually hear people raise such qualms with these sorts of adaptations, probably because they are known quantities. We know what a book-to-film adaptation is like. It's a Thing. Bringing Homestuck into static media is not a Thing, because I essentially invented the original format. This probably messes with people's heads on the issue somewhat.

I guess part of it is that craving absolute purity and fidelity from an adaptation is a hallmark of the zealously devoted. That's fine, but isn't really a point of view I cotton to. It's very rigid, very linear, and those demands are ironically antithetical to the spirit behind HS's creation, and all those crazy things that allegedly won't cross over to print. So you say HS "absolutely cannot exist in a book?" If I had much concern for what a story absolutely could or couldn't be, I wouldn't have even made it in the first place. Imagine again a movie with all its motion and sound becoming a graphic novel, and how reasonable this endeavor is. What if the hyper-zealous nerd has concerns that the novel won't be able to capture all of this FEELING and EMOTION from the scenes that the pacing and sound evoked through perfect, literal duplication in print? Well, it won't. It's not supposed to, and it's a completely unreasonable expectation to have for the adaptation. It will be a different angle on the work, and that's fine. It's great, in fact. It should be what you want from an adaptation. If you want to re-experience exactly what you felt in its original form, then you may go enjoy it in its original form again. That's why it's there.

The funny thing is, all the types of adaptations I mentioned, like book-to-film, are very major departures in format. A Homestuck book actually comes quite close to representing the original work by comparison, because after all, HS is at least 95% mostly-static panels, with text underneath. Anyone who says that's outrageously unfit for print is being quite extreme. As a whole, the thing is basically a great big comic. A comic with a few perks the web affords.

This suggestion has come up a million times, even before I did the PS books and people were wondering how those were going to work with all the animation, or if they even COULD work. (Fast forward to now, those books went off without a hitch and they're totally sweet!)

Embedding a flipbook in an HS book couldn't be anything more than a novelty. Some little thing you stick in the corner, turn the whole book to the side, and flip through the pages. It would allow for very little meaningful animation to be presented.

Basically, if this suggestion is serious, my response is: man, that is sooo literal. It's not a reasonable way to show animation in a book that also tells a mostly unanimated story, and it doesn't solve a problem which isn't even really a problem.

This is not what she said. She only said the Summoner's rebellion caused the Empress to banish adults from the home world to fight the wars in space. This doesn't mean that's when they invented space travel.

They had a presence in space for much longer, including during the Sufferer's time apparently. But after Alternia turned "kids only" there was much more emphasis on interstellar conquest, to keep all the adults too busy to organize any more rebellions.

Terezi mentioned Troll Jegus in a joking exchange with John a while ago. Whether the Sufferer's name is actually Jegus, and whether or not she actually knew anything about this story when she said that, is left to your speculation.

This ancestor interlude is a little religious tale. Over the course of the story sometimes we wander into these silly mini-genres, like "horrorstuck", or erotic historical fiction through Mindfang's journal entries.

The Jesus parallel is pretty blatant, down to the use of the torture device as the symbol for the religious movement (cross, irons). I personally think the explanation of the relevance of Karkat's sign is one of the more interesting aspects about it, just from the perspective of taking existing symbols and adapting them to an evolving mythological framework. Segments like this aren't really just about "Gee, the ancestors sure are cool, let's hear more about them." (Though there's no question there's a certain amount of fan service in play when I do stuff like this.) We learn more about the story and characters and answer questions beyond the limited scope of their biographies, like why Karkat had a sign at all if he had no caste.

We learn more about the troll race, as a once peaceful species and such before kid-ancestors as players scratched their session, though the short term relevance of this is mainly as a preamble to Scratch's religious story. Establishing an Eden-like paradise from which there is some departure through sin is sort of the boilerplate basis for religious lore.

Scratch is a devil figure about as blatant as the Sufferer is a Christ figure. The failed players from peaceful Alternia made a classic "deal with the devil" move by causing the scratch after being given a choice by the mother of all monsters. (Echidna. Hey, she's a big snake!) By doing so they brought Scratch into their universe, and therefore all the things you'd expect that comes with summoning the devil. This resulted not only turning Alternia into a planet full of violent murderers, but it only technically granted them what they wanted with a huge caveat, as is the case with such ill-advised bargains. The players were strong enough to win, but made a terminal universe, were barred from entry, hunted by a demon, and then started killing each other.

"Old Scratch" is actually an old timey nickname for the devil. It's used in some Twain books. The manipulative devil figure pulling the strings was always the basis for his character, and this was probably pretty obvious right away. He's part devil/puppet/cueball, with a dash of the old gambler/gunslinger Doc Holliday in his profile. Doc Holliday is actually my ancestor. He is related to me on my mother's side, who's last name is also Holliday.

Hopefully I won't die at age 36 of tuberculosis though. If there's anything to the karmic fortune-swapping of the trolls and their ancestors, ideally tuberculosis will die of me.

Because he's a huge gross monster? I don't what sort of answer would be meaningful.

When the highbloods were setting up the judicial system, they said ok we're going to need some judges for this thing. Then they said ok how about these massive brainless monsters, that would be so perfect.

The pantskat gag has been reiterated a few times now. The first time (I think was the fedorafreak log?) was just a dumb little shoutout. Subsequent times was essentially for the benefit of archive readers who wouldn't understand or even notice the reference. Repetition ossifies it as a running gag, so instead of it going over their heads the first time, a few gags later they start to ask, hey what's with these references to guys wearing tall pants?

It is to their benefit, by which I mean, does not improve their understanding of the gag by any measure whatsoever.

It's not clear that he is getting in touch with his in-game powers, like John did with the windy thing, or whether withdrawing from his sopor slime haze is bringing out psychic powers he would have had anyway.

The latter would make sense for his bloodline though. If this were a common ability among subjugglators, it would help explain why they're able to hold power over all lower classes.

It's implied that they're very strong and dangerous, in addition to being insane and unpredictable. But this by itself doesn't necessarily explain why they'd be able to keep power over such a huge population of similarly dangerous trolls, which also have many deadly powers. Especially since, also implied, the higher the blood, the longer they live. This means lower classes must be much more copious than higher classes. The lowbloods die off much more quickly, and so must be spawned in greater numbers. Those with high longevity can't afford to be spawned in such numbers, or the population would be out of control. At the top of the hierarchy is the Empress, who lives for thousands of years. There is only one of her class, discounting her successor.

For the subjugglators in their small numbers to keep such a large population under their control, it would be very useful to have the ability to psychically amplify fears through dreams. They may have directed their chucklevoodoos on every susceptible mind in the population. Each lowblood may have a little highblood voodoo doll lurking in their subconscious, making them too terrified to organize any sort of rebellion.

Additional notes:

Now knowing he had this ability, we can wonder whether he used it during his rampage, in addition to using it on John/Dave. Did he use the ability to befuddle Terezi into pinning the crime on Vriska in spite of laughably overwhelming evidence to the contrary? Turning Terezi against Vriska was likely the only way he could kill Vriska, due to her cerebral "luck neutralizing" ability. Did he exaggerate Karkat's fears to destabilize the team? What about Equius? Maybe he exaggerated his fear of failing to show a superior deference, to the point of incapacitation.

Scratch keeps Aradia (???) locked up in a room with a 5th wall. She turned it on and tried to break it, presumably to attempt to escape.

Through the 5th wall, you can see me positioning two 4th walls facing each other, exactly one yard apart. English's coat is still draped over one. I put that there a while ago to obscure Jade's view of me. Remember?

A 4th wall is an object that when broken or compromised, allows an author to interact directly with the audience or characters in the story.

A 5th wall is a partition separating two omniscient narrators, which when broken, allows them to mess with each other.

I will happen to be in the area over the weekend for unrelated reasons, but I don't think I'm going to pony up the 80 bucks or whatever to get a load of the animes.

What I might do is briefly lurk outside the convention, and sneak up behind HS cosplayers while they take photos of each other, and then quickly vanish into the scenery.

I'm suddenly not sure which idea is more amusing. Actually doing that, or the fact that by saying so here, I have guaranteed that all HS cosplayers will be nervously looking over their shoulders all weekend.

The page rate is deceptively slow when you zoom in on a select few days. There was a 6 day pause, then 13 pages went up. So that's about 2 pages per day, which is "slow", right? But then you wait a few more days, and 23 pages have stacked up, and suddenly that rate jumps to 4 pages per day, which is close to the site average. And if you examine the period between now and 10 days ago, the rate is almost 8 pages per day, which is way above average. It's better to think of the output in longer term averages. This is harder for those who demand regularity and predictability, which is something you get from some comics which update once every weekday, or m/w/f, without fail as part of their product delivery pledge. In these cases, the regularity of the output strikes me as being almost as important, and sometimes more important, than the quality of the content itself. This is because people are creatures of habit, and have a strong craving for reliability. Many will quite happily absorb work they consider to be fairly mediocre as long as it is cranked out like clockwork. The sunday funnies is probably a good long term example of this. Millions of people gobbled up decades of Marmaduke without ever laughing once, but editors wouldn't dare fuck with Marmaduke because people needed that shit with their coffee for some reason. You could put a gun to their head and they couldn't tell you why. There is comfort in even bland routine. If you mess with people's comfort and destabilize certain regularities in their universe, they become agitated, even angry.

Now, if people actually have any sort of passion for the entertainment comprising their routine, then they become even more agitated if the output is disturbed. Passionate interest severely exacerbates the situation, and can make a creator envy someone like Marmaduke Guy who spent his career crouching safely in mediocrity, grinding out awful dog comics everyone became totally comfortable with disliking. (I bet he never got an angry letter from an anime fan.) But if you mess with the schedule of material that people zealously crave, they are not merely irked, but can receive it as a personal affront from the author. This is true in varying degrees for probably most enthusiastic readers, but is more pronounced by the degree to which a person is mentally ill.

There are some particularly unpleasant entities out there who pose questions similar to yours, but much less politely. These are seemingly self appointed watchdogs for my page rate, and I think I'm safe in assuming most are severely under-medicated teens with a bigtime beef about You Fucking Name It. As torrid a pace as Homestuck has been unloaded on the public, I think it must have been pretty easy for some spoiled children to factor that rate of output into the entitlement complex which presides over their central nervous systems. Deviation from that production schedule in the minds of the entitled means nothing other than offense committed by the author, or more generously, just a staggering display of laziness. Never mind that the alleged deviation may not even QUITE exist (see numbers in first paragraph). But if it did, I wonder whose rate of production they would compare it to, aside from some foggy recollection of my own?

For such people, what would probably be useful would be a dose of perspective. Not that they're likely to read this, but let's consider the following data anyway, kindly provided by tvtropes.com.

MSPA is the longest web comic on record, in terms of update quantity. It accumulated most of this content in about 3 years. Now consider that the second comic on the list is approximately THE OLDEST WEB COMIC IN EXISTENCE. It dates back to 1995, which for all intents and purposes was the year the internet was born.

There are of course some mitigating factors. Most MSPA updates are a single panel, with some accompanying text. But there are some counter-caveats which make this a bit more difficult to process. There are several hours of animated Flash footage mixed in with the updates. There are several more hours of interactive gameplay. Each Flash instance occupies a single update. Many updates are accompanied by several pages of dialogue. Some of these individual conversations would take up 50 pages worth of speech bubbles in a graphic novel. The total word count for MSPA likely exceeds most of the comics on that list, or possibly all of them. It wouldn't be surprising. Homestuck alone is over 300K words. Again, this effort was compressed into the last 3 years, while most of the other comics date back to the 90's.

What does this mean? Here is what it means.

Let's imagine MSPA was distributed more like a "normal comic". Where, even with a healthy update schedule of 7 days a week, you still only get one new thing to click on. One update per day. It could be a simple panel with a silly gag and no text. Could be a panel with 10 pages of dialogue beneath it. Or it could be a 3 minute flash animation. All are things that appear in the archive in good supply. Distributing one such thing per day, as the designated "product", would be a completely reasonable policy. If that were the established pattern from the start, nobody would think it was remotely inappropriate, and nobody would ask for more, in the same way that nobody ever demands that Penny Arcade update 7 days a week instead of 3.

If that were the case, MSPA would now have 16 years worth of content.

So what does THIS mean??

It means, given that I started 3 years ago, I could take a 13 year break starting now, and at the end of that break, MSPA's lifetime rate of production would still manage to make the lifetime rate of most other comics seem underwhelming. This is literally, actually true, even though it sounds like a joke. There is statistical evidence to support this, using the only data that matters, which is the existing work of peers in the same field.

So if some twerp who's never put a stretch of hard work into anything aside from grinding for levels in WoW all weekend decides to get on my case about slowing down, I think I'll just start whispering "13 year break..."

13 year break.........

13 year break............................

13

year

break.

P.S. I wonder how many frowns this question would get if you could frown at things?

P.P.S. smile @ this question if you don't like idea of 13 year break :) :) :) :) :)

I'm not really thinking about which style is better. Mainly what matters here is the idea doesn't work unless I post a large amount of content at once. So that's what I do.

I'm sure there are differences in the reading experience. Some may find it more gratifying to read a lot at once. It certainly consolidates impact, which is something that is often lost through the slow, steady serial drip. But they may also find it frustrating to wait longer for the pages to stack up. It may provoke the feeling that output is slowing down, or grinding to a halt.

This is not actually true though. After the 6 day pause, 41 pages were posted. That's about 7 pages per day, which is higher than the site's lifetime average of 5 pages per day. It's actually a hot streak!

Posting it all on the site took about an hour. There was a lot of double checking to do to make sure everything linked up right. It's easy to fuck up the posting process even under normal circumstances.

Nah, I was mostly useless on the road. I eked out those two pages preceding this while away, and that's it.

The couple days after returning were useless too. Took the last few days to make these.

I guess the bottom line is 30 panels still take a pretty good while to make??

The same was true for all those header images. If you look at the archive for the past month or so, it doesn't look like a hot and heavy update pace. But take into consideration that there are now 80 separate header images stacked up.

Not Bard Quest necessarily, just taking advantage of the fact that I built the site from the beginning to allow branching paths, even if they all wind up back at the same place. Every other story does this. BQ obviously, Jailbreak has one fork that converges again, and Problem sleuth uses a couple really quick offshoots to handle deaths and other fuck-ups.

Aside from that, one of the main points of the Scratch segment was not only to slip into a different gear with respect to story pacing, but to introduce a vehicle to explore new methods for engaging with events in a story which has accrued a vast amount of detail and complexity. The consequence has been a little more detachment from the events directly as we experience some mediation between us and the characters through this host. But what comes with that bit of extra distance from the story, and bringing to fore its features as a work of metafiction, are these devices for accessing this complex story which wouldn't make sense to introduce without letting this segment build some momentum.

Telling the story in parallel through the header images was an example of that potential, and tying together the themes in the header with the main content was one of the interesting challenges. And of course the narrator himself is a character with a role in the story, so as he tells the story he is advancing his own role in it as well. A lot more is being advanced at the same time, in a way that I think is fun and in the spirit of everything on the site. The scrapbook thing is another example, a way of utilizing some of these silly meta-story devices which at first appear to be mocking the format itself, but become another useful gateway into a bunch of different threads of the story at once. Of course you read those threads one at a time, but the feeling is that they're being accessed in parallel. Using parallel story telling devices seemed like an interesting way to address what has become a formidable number of threads to keep track of, and also a fun way to give some forgotten details a little more attention which would seem like a pretty frivolous diversion otherwise (like Nepeta talking to Jaspers), while still finding a way to give them a little relevance to the current storylines.

In a way the Scratch segment has been like busting open a pinata of different storytelling devices and seeing what's there to work with. And he sort of did that literally when he broke the scrapbook over Slick's head, releasing all the clippings from the story, both old and new. Having them strewn about the place is another semi-mocking acknowledgement of the nature of the story, a thing which has dissolved into absolute nonlinearity, where looking into a panel at any point in time, past present or future, reality memory dream or afterlife, is something which can advance the plot. Because it advances not just through unfolding action, but by what previously concealed information is exposed, and how it's presented.

This was actually one of the reasons for devising the dream bubble system. It serves a purpose in the plot, yes, but it also has flexible narrative utility. The dream bubbles allow moments of the past to be explored, or moments of an alternate timeline, through memories of characters in such a way that it doesn't have to be a strict flashback, can be invested with more immediate relevance to what's going on, and allows a way for characters to talk about it. (Remember, rules for when dialogue is allowed are pretty strict! Dream bubbles amended the rules such that characters can converse directly when dreaming or dead. This is because the segments begin as memories consisting of online conversations, and continue from there.) It was a more effective way to convey Cal's final journey and Scratch's origin, for instance. And it again becomes a useful tool when examining a clipping on the floor of an obscure event in the past. We enter the panel somewhat like the characters do, seeing it as a memory of something that's already happened, but the scene evolves as the characters remember, and soon through their interaction it catches up with the current state of the story and contributes to it. Other clippings are played a little more straight, like we are briefly entering a window to another parallel event, then moving on. Either way, going into his clippings momentarily reconnects us directly with the story rather than experiencing it through his mediation. But then, the mediation allowed us to do this in the first place. There'll probably be a few more of these scrapbook gateways before we're done with them.

Wait, it's this question again! The exact same question, what are the odds. It's like the question's ghost or something.

I agree that dropping from 16 to 8 characters leaves the story direly under-staffed. I mean when it was down to 14 that was already pretty sketchy territory. People were asking "can hussie REALLY finish a story with only 14 main characters? i know he's good, but is that even POSSIBLE?" 8 is practically a skeleton crew!

But don't worry, help is on the way. Soon I will launch the lengthy squiddle intermission, documenting the tale of the 48 heroic squiddles who played in the session which created the troll universe.

At first, people will bemoan this drastic departure from the "real story" and wonder when we can get back to Homestuck proper. But over time, you will grow to love each squiddle dearly. Each will be more exquisitely characterized than the last, and it is only then, when you have welcomed them into your hearts, will the ruthless culling begin.

Then we'll get back to the trolls and you'll be like fuck these guys.

Until the fedorafreak intermission comes along and bails us out. For 10,000 pages of hat pissing bliss.

So because there is a right answer, I am obligated to share it? Instead of letting the work stand as presented, while offering a couple things for people to think about?

Oh no I just caught another glimpse of the phrase post-modern moralistic relativism and felt gross suddenly. Like I am hearing is the sound of a dumb guy yelling through the gross megaphone of a college education. Gross! :[

Most of these characters didn't exist a year ago. Vriska was introduced in July last year. I opened these arcs understanding most of them would likely be closed, and every gesture has paved the way for what you see now. Act five has been a great swelling of cast complexity followed by a great contraction. I knew it was going to have this overall structure.

Another approach would have been to treat this cast like that of a syndicated cartoon, with amusing but basically static lives. Antics happen, hijinks are afoot, everyone is pals and things are ok forever. Tune in next week! I don't deny there's entertainment value in that, with the content leaning on characters and relationships above anything else. This is actually the reality of this work echoed by the collective consciousness of fan artists, who cast all these characters in a perma-living state playing out amusing scenarios with each other. It's fun. Doesn't serve the bigger story much! Not one with a complex architecture headed in a very specific direction, but fun nonetheless. It would be prioritizing character far beyond the overarching story. I'm not doing that. Certainly not with characters always designed to play a transient role.

The bottom line is, I had plans, and I stuck to them. I wouldn't change them midstream because I got the sense that some people would rather Homestuck be "Trolls! The Sitcom."

Lots of people did. And I knew people would. Which is one reason why I presented it through the mechanism of the scattered photo album which mocks the entire visual callback phenomenon which everyone has come to anticipate now.

I try to anticipate if certain outcomes are guessable. If it is, I don't necessarily dismiss the idea, but I do try to do something unexpected with it, if not in substance, at least delivery.

The story provides no conclusive answer to this, and I personally cannot provide the scoop either. Not that I am withholding it to be coy, but to take my word for it one way or another would be missing the point. The destruction of the clock is another element among many for you to weigh when considering these events.

First, there's the consideration of whether her death was just, heroic, or neither. The clock appeared to be leaning toward "just", when it was interrupted by the crowbar. Maybe it would have landed there. Or if given the chance, maybe it would have swung back and settled somewhere else. We don't have a definitive ruling. All we know for sure is she's dead.

So we can conclude that either:

1) The clock itself has no bearing on her life directly, much as clocks merely measure time without influencing it. Which would mean if given the chance it definitely would have landed on either just or heroic, but not in the middle. The proof is her death.

or

2) The result of the clock does have direct bearing on her life, and by knocking the clock over so that it stuck on "just", Slick inadvertently killed her for good, regardless of where it may have landed. But to be fair, if he knew it was going to kill her, he might be hitting it harder. You could consider it delayed revenge for his exile, which Vriska and Snowman coordinated. It's safe to assume Slick would have found her death to be quite just, and may have been weighing in on the matter through circumstantial serendipity.

If 2) is true, there is another wrinkle to consider. Recall that the crowbar he is using (from the intermission) has the property of being able to nullify the effect of whatever "enchanted" object it destroys. If the clock's power is to decide whether she resurrects, then by destroying it, he eliminates that power. Since there's no longer a force enabling her to resurrect, she remains dead. This is another way to look at it, but again, only if the clock itself has that power over her life.

If not, then the destruction of the clock becomes more a violent gesture of punctuation to accompany this "divine ruling", like nails being driven into a coffin. Or, like a tolling bell. It's jarring, sudden, and carries finality.

If you are convinced her actions are what decided her death, and not the destruction of the clock, then you are left to consider what outcome is most suitable, without having an absolute ruling on it. The clock did appear to lean "just" an instant before, and there are plenty of ways to argue in favor of a just death. There are many mitigating factors as well to supply a counter argument. It would not be that interesting if it were absolutely unambiguous, where everyone could all easily agree that her death was just. Or if everyone agreed there was no justice in it at all. There are enough factors in play where you have reason to think about it a bit, and such that it leaves plenty to discuss. You may consider the evidence and draw a conclusion. You may even feel very strongly about your conclusion! But for either the story, or me, to provide a categorically "right answer", immediately following the establishment of all the things that made it interesting to consider, shortchanges all that, I believe. For the clock to settle unceremoniously on "just" I feel would come across as a nonconstructive, compact ethical lecture, quickly nullifying all there was to evaluate and talk about.

Was this comeuppance for all her past killing? For killing friends like Aradia and Tavros? Was there mitigation in her upbringing? In her remorse, and desire to change? Was it justice for insisting on playing a role in the creation of Jack so that she could beat him, to serve her ego? What of the ignored warning from Terezi? Flying off in spite of it, endangering them all, again in service of ego? What of the doomed timeline she creates by doing this? Is there justice alone in killing her to prevent not only the death of all her friends, but an offshoot reality that can only fail? Is human morality in play here? Troll morality?? Or is it a higher agency, like that permeating Skaia? In a framework of Skaian morality, is there justice in sacrificing one life to help ensure the creation of an entire universe? This paragraph has been a thumbnail sketch of all the discussion which has already taken place across the internet, minus all the notes ranging from fan fervor to outright dementia.

Of all the arguments to make, it's difficult to come up with a solid rationale for a heroic result. Most people debating it would choose between "just" or "not just", i.e. die or live. Note that this means those who believe her death was not just are in fact arguing that the destruction of the clock is actually what killed her!!! There is nothing in the story which rules this out.

Regardless, the result is the same. She's dead. Out of the story for good? Who knows. For now it's the culmination of a wide arc importing elements from classic tragedy. Blind seers, wanton hubris, unheeded warnings, regret and death. But with some MSPA twists. Systematized mortality conditions, doomed timeline offshoots, way too much dramatic irony, and Nic Cage.

She was always a polarizing character. Shouldn't be too surprising she's more polarizing than ever in death. It's almost as if that polarity was given concrete expression through the rules dictating whether she lived or died.

Since 4/13, I never imagined there would be a very significant 6/12 "celebratory update". It would require planning the right moment in the story for it to coincide exactly with that date, while allotting well beforehand the time to implement it when it comes, with no unforeseen delays at all. So I ruled it out well in advance to avoid the inevitable unpleasant conflict. The anticipation of such an update was a product of your inflated sense of expectation, and standards which you reserve for no comic artist other than me.

This will realistically never come up again, so here is how they work.

Matchsticks (11) travels through time using fire at any point in time as a gateway. He then likes to put out the fire when he arrives, so that more copies of him from other points in time don't show up and make things complicated. Unless he wants to exploit that for battle purposes, which he clearly didn't. Scratch keeps a fire alarm in his apartment to summon him, in case it catches fire, which it clearly did.

Quarters (14) has a collection of coins like the one Clover flipped. Each has numbers on either side, corresponding to a member of the Felt, most separated by 10, with a few exceptions. i.e.

1, 11
2, 12
3, 13
4, 14
5, 15
6, 9
7, 10
8, 8

When you flip the coin, it summons the member whose number is face up, from some place in space and time. If the opposite member is present during the flip, he trades places with that member, which is why Clover swapped for Quarters when he flipped 14.

If you flip your own coin, and the result is your own number, you die. As such, Quarters entrusts his own coin with Clover, who is so lucky, he will never flip a 4. He uses it to summon Quarters when things get too hot to handle. It's not advisable to let Snowman flip her own coin.

The coins link pairs of Felt members. Some are relevant pairings, others don't make much sense. Die and Stitch have a similar power, with their destructive/healing voodoo doll and effigies. Doze and Eggs make a pair of morons with a funny duo name (dozen eggs!) Itchy runs around so fast he probably starts fires sometimes, while Matchsticks puts them out.

Guys it is the FORMSPRING QUESTION OF THE DAY! Maybe I will only answer these vapid questions for a while, leaving you all to wonder how many penises trolls have. *

I'm a virgo, which is why when I was dressed as a troll in the story, I had a virgo shirt on. As a cool bonus, that symbol looks a little like it says "Me", which is really quite ironic, since I myself happen to be me.

Two answer the second part of the question, yes it is very representative of who I am, because as I have mentioned before, I am a just this HUGE lesbian. Big time.

I was wearing a Karkat shirt today though, because I've got all these HS shirts lying around that I wear sometimes. A cashier saw it and said, "Hey I'm a cancer too!" And I didn't know what to say, so I said, "Oh! ........................................... Haha! Yeah." And completed the transaction.

I'm starting to be a little more reluctant to wear the HS shirts though, because they're starting to get me recognized in public more frequently. Not just as an HS reader, but as actually me, which will never not be a vaguely disorienting, Truman Showesque experience.

* (the answer is two. one hate dick and one love dick. you're welcome, internet, for all the terrible art that joke answer will be responsible for.)

What took place over those pages is almost a direct transcription of what would have happened in the flash. The events were conveyed visually and verbally to suit the Scratch narration, instead of shown through high-intensity animated visuals alone. The Scratch segment was not introduced as a substitute for the animation. An "abridged" stretch like this was going to come anyway as a device for setting a few things up before starting on the EOA animation. Axing the Rose v. Jack / Vriska v. Jack animation (aka Heroes of Light: Strife) just meant moving Scratch the segment up sooner, to use as a vehicle for delivering the full flash concept without having to scrap it as a story direction, which would have been a pretty significant architectural upheaval.

Now that it's out there, we can examine the pros and cons of delivering it that way as opposed to flash. (But note, no matter what, there was no chance of that flash getting made whatsoever. This is really not about "what could have been")

Pros of flash:

- Would have been WAY MORE RADICAL (frankly I don't care much about this. the rad quotient of preceding flash material is already pretty high, and there's plenty more combustible shit to come)

- The idea as a whole would have been delivered in minutes, rather than weeks, giving people the full sense of the story development all at once, and limiting the drag on the serial readers' experience, and corresponding vocalization of those frustrations (would have been BY FAR the biggest advantage of flash)

Cons:

- Concept as a whole may have been a bit challenging to parse with visuals alone. The two parallel battles are easy enough to understand, but I can easily imagine confusion over the alternate timeline concept as conveyed only visually. People have been confused by less. Much, much less.

- Difficulty factor. Even with art contributors. There's a limit to not only what I can do personally, but what a largely unstructured volunteer effort can accomplish as well.

- Hiatus-induced suicide pact among readership.

Pros of narration:

- Get to experiment with a little parallel storytelling, via the top banner. (pretty big plus, IMO!)

- Having it narrated removes ambiguity about a fairly cerebral chain of events, while allowing the chance to indirectly develop Scratch's involvement in the story a bit.

- I get to take my time with it and pretend to function like a normal human being for a little while.

Cons:

- Slow rolling the segment page by page has serial readers agonizing every step of the way over every conceivable issue, on points of execution, unwelcome "story developments", and so on. Once again, Homestuck is RUINED FOREVER! Until it isn't, of course.

- If you're not into Scratch as a character or don't like his tone or the whole omniscient smartass thing, then you probably aren't digging the arc much. Not much to say about this. It's just a "you like it or you don't" kind of thing.

- Altering the flow of the story always carries the risk of agitating some readers. Not only because mixing shit up = automatic complaints (which is definitely true), but because by accelerating the pace to make broader narrative strokes, you are inviting the usual objections fixated on showing vs. telling. But I think there are some legitimate gears of storytelling which involve showing by way of telling outright, as long as the reader has the patience to see it through to its conclusion (problematic serially, as usual). It's a gear in which bigger story chunks that normally are given strong magnification (like a death) are told more compactly and in succession. These bigger chunks, when stacked up, "show", or more appropriately "reveal" an even bigger idea which is at the true heart of that narrative stretch. It's not the event which the reader momentarily feels "should" expand to fill the stage, like a death. The death that with hindsight functions as a building block of a more complete idea which more effectively serves the story as a whole, completing unfinished arcs, building on the themes and such.

You can look at story pacing like rolling a Katamari ball, with respect to the granularity of what has focus. At the beginning of HS, I'm rolling it around and picking up nickels and buttons. That's when John messing around with cakes and such has focus as actual plot points. The ball keeps rolling until points like that are too marginal to zoom in on, and he's exploring a mysterious oily land killing monsters and stuff while we gloss over a lot of detail that in an earlier mode would have received intense scrutiny. We are picking up things like traffic cones and bicycles with our katamari ball, while still sculpting a shape that as a whole resembles a story. Hivebent was rolled with even bigger denominations, maybe cars and trucks, gobbling up even bigger chunks like buildings by the end of the arc, as Aradia was offhandedly mentioning how they killed the king and created a universe. With hindsight we see why, understanding the overall purpose that arc had for the story, and how that particular pacing supported that purpose. Unlike Katamari though, the ball does get smaller sometimes, to go back to accommodating certain levels of detail like conversations and game mechanics, but it never dials all the way back. Doc has rolled with some of the biggest chunks yet, like buildings or mountains, casually dropping the deaths of characters as atomic features of his narration. He clearly rolls the ball smaller at times too, when he wants. But this construction too has purpose, which needs some patience to watch it take shape and then hindsight to fully appreciate.

And like I've suggested before, these can be pretty disastrous conditions for the serial intake of a story. But honestly, there is no other way to do it. To strive to satisfy serial readers all the time is to do nothing but make something terrible in the long run. It means you can't do much to set up anything sophisticated with deferred payoff, as you perpetually submit what will immediately gratify. I can't tell people that reading serially is the "wrong" way to read it, because this is not true. But there's no escaping the fact that having pages leaked out so slowly radically warps your perception of what is happening, sometimes for the better (community discussion, noticing details etc), but often aggravates (arc fatigue, rushing to judgment...) Try to imagine watching your favorite movie, for the first time ever, but only a minute at a time, every day. Sound frustrating? How often do you think you might get irritated with the director for his pacing decisions? Or his "plot twists", which are really just the products of scenes cut short before fully paying off? How often do you think you might want to insist he move it along? What about reading your favorite book, but only receiving about a paragraph or two every day? And what if the author/director was tuned into the responses to this daily output? Is there anything he could do to outrun the impatience of the reader for plot points he's carefully set up to be evaluated in the minute-space of archival read-through, which the reader labors over in the month-space of serial digestion? Can he do anything to deflect or mitigate their rush to judgment of incomplete arcs? Should he? Probably not.

The pages spanning the two links above provide a pretty good example of how serial intake messes with perception, and of why authors tend to like to finish books before showing them to you. Now that it's all there, let's look at the reasonable serial reactions to some key moments, and compare to the reality in hindsight.

- Terezi flips coin, Vriska flies away.

Serial reaction: augh, anticlimax!!! All that build up, the stair climbing and show downing and coin flipping... where's the battle? Where's........ SOMETHING?

Reality: This was only the beginning of a deferred resolution to the ongoing Terezi/Vriska rivalry. The resolution was actually the full sweep of this series of events in totality, resulting in Terezi looking into the doomed timeline to find the rationale and the courage to kill Vriska, which she finally did. All that buildup was not for that one-page deflation, but this full sequence. Reservation of judgment was required, something that is much easier to practice when there are more pages to click on.

.....

I could go on but I just realized I'm tired of typing. But really, the list goes on and on like this throughout the whole story. Things which come off as odd or vaguely unsatisfying or even JUST SO TERRIBLE in the short term, but make sense and work better overall in the big picture.

You could complete this exercise yourself if you felt like it. Look at an event, remember how you felt on reading it live, and now how you view it in retrospect. Or, for extra credit, imagine you could wipe your memory of the past several months of content, and pretend I just posted it all today. What would your reaction be? How does it read? Do the issues which seemed to loom so large in the moment, like the omnipresent "get on with it" factor, even cross your mind for a second during such an archival dump? And for extra extra credit, imagine wiping your memory of all of Homestuck, and I just dropped it all in your lap right now while you were idling musing what sort of thing I might work on after Problem Sleuth. What do you think? Of it in totality, and of recent events? What is there that wears thin, on its own terms of pacing, rather than that dictated by two years of attrition on one's ability to remain completely engaged and cognizant of all relevant threads?

There is a lot to think about when you make a story. Not just in how to make it, but in how it is absorbed. One story is really two completely different stories. The one that is read all at once, and the one that is read over your shoulder while you make it.

Here is a thing to understand first. If you accept a commission to draw a Homestuck character without my permission, does that mean I will file a cease and desist order? Or if you sell an HS sketch at a convention, will I hunt you down, kick over your table, and then muss up your hair and stomp on your glasses?

No, that would be silly.

I just clarified what the official position is, which is that you shouldn't attempt to profit from my work, or anyone else's for that matter, unless you have permission. It's not that I'm suddenly outraged people are doing HS commissions and stuff. I've previously taken an ultra passive attitude to all this. But the result of that, as well as the result in HS's growing popularity, has been a surging culture of casual copyright violation, which though seemingly harmless case by case, in totality is starting to look problematic. In particular, it seems to be leading to increasingly flagrant violations here and there, things which are more serious than a simple commission, and which I would be inclined to take measures to stop. It's easy to see how this trend develops. Someone notices wave after wave of HS artwork being sold by others, and presumes it's ok to take it a little further. And then further...

I think it's better to address this before it turns into a bigger problem. Honestly, the theoretical money I am losing is not what is motivating me here. When you do an HS commission, I can't really imagine how that translates to dollars leaving my pocket, other than projecting losses in the very big picture if stuff like that goes unchecked. It's mainly a little unsettling to watch so many people at once act so casually about profiting off another's IP without asking, and even more unsettling to imagine it spiraling out of control.

It may be the case that a sketch of a Pokemon sold to your friend is an unenforceable violation, and Nintendo will never get involved, but it is still technically a violation. Please understand the fact that it is unenforceable does not make it less of a violation. You have profited from Nintendo's property, without permission. Which is not to say there are not degrees of violation beyond this which are more flagrant, but we should be clear about it. Knowing that, you might decide to do it anyway. Or you might decide to ask Nintendo permission. (They would say no. I might not, though.)

Requiring you to ask permission isn't much of an imposition. But I hesitate to guarantee satisfaction even if you do, because for one thing, your email might slip through the cracks and I might not get back to you. It's happened before. I've had requests like this, and some I've responded to favorably, while others I didn't get around to replying to. Which I feel bad about, as I generally feel bad I can't answer all my mail, but that's how it goes. All I can say is, if you're wondering, ask. I may say yes. I may say no. I may not respond. If I don't, then you may use your discretion, while understanding the position I have taken. If you cross a line, there's a good chance you'll hear from me eventually.

I'd rather this not be about finding out exactly what I do or don't allow, and then just getting down to furiously attacking that wiggle room I give. I'd rather it be about respect for the property of artists. Everyone who this affects is an artist as well, presumably. If you're an artist, you should care about this topic and evaluate your standards, because you are undoubtedly hoping others will respect your work and your rights as well. Imagine you are at a convention, selling Pokemon drawings or such. If you knew one of Nintendo's most aggressive lawyers was lurking nearby, would you still do it? Is it fear of being prosecuted that motivates you to stop? Or is it the fact that you do not own Pokemon, and though it belongs to a multi billion dollar company that won't feel the slightest hardship because of you, it doesn't seem right, because these aren't your creations? Or maybe it is less about respect to the original creator, and more about taking pride in selling what you have created yourself, or at the very least, that which you have been given the right to?

And if the idea of selling black market Pokemon stuff makes you feel uncomfortable, where the owner has millions of dollars applied to a legal staff interested in crushing IP violations no matter how well intended, then why would you feel better about selling stuff owned by a guy without a tiny fraction of those resources, who has heretofore shown not even the slightest interest in taking action against his enthusiastic fans?

These are things for you to think about, and then act according to your internal compass on the matter. I am not going to TAKE YOU DOWN if you sell a sketch of a troll to a friend or whatever. I'm just letting you know my position, and will be reasonably content to let the fans govern themselves, unless certain lines are crossed. Then we will talk.

As for the Formspring Question of the Day...

Eventually, before I die, I would like to somehow, some way, get my hands on that god damn fucking tiger.

A truly authentic god hood, with a long, darker blue hood, and short sleeves, would be a costume. It would not be a garment most people would actually be interested in wearing on a day to day basis. Some would, absolutely. The majority of interested buyers? Nope, especially considering what it would cost.

To manufacture such an item in a significant volume would be so complex, it would take a very long time, and would cost a fortune. It's hard to express how absurd this undertaking would be from my standpoint, and the standpoint of good business practice.

I am sorry the reality does not match your expectations. They would be reasonable expectations if Homestuck was a property of, say, Disney. And the top Disney honcho could make a call to the guy in the Chinese factory which Disney undoubtedly owns and say "Hey, let's make a million of these." and have that operational agility, and ability to make it cost effective through outrageous volume. Unfortunately, Disney doesn't own Homestuck yet.

So what you see is the best possible shirt in the real world, but also by any standard I think. It is pretty close to the shirt in the comic, while still being a very normal, wearable garment that doesn't make people feel like they are trucking down to the local anime convention whenever they leave the house in it.

I did the same drill about a year ago when my computer broke, which is when I made the "replace don't fix" resolution I currently try to swear by. I then fixed up that old computer, and gave it to a friend.

I also got a new machine several years prior to that, and did something similar with the old one.

In the last five to ten years, I have spent less money on new machines than someone who has recently purchased a single Apple product.

I didn't own Windows, or a box, or a key. It came installed on my previous computer. I used to own Windows XP, but lost that CD a while ago. I have since bought Windows 7, in order to refurbish my spare computer.

Wait, why I am telling you this?!?!

I guess I'm holding out an olive branch to you, anonymous formspring guy. The ball is now in your court. Let's be best friends together.

Everything I read about it indicated it was a feature, and considered desirable functionality by Adobe (which is WHACK yo).

But maybe this tip would have been the workaround?

I don't know. If I'd unearthed that info while messing with it I might have run with CS5.

But really all that stuff wasn't just about how dumb I thought CS5 was. Long story short, I spent way too long trying to get CS3 to work, tried out CS5 for a bit, bailed on it, then fixed CS3. Now it's pretty much ok.

I don't. Bear in mind, the time required was only part of the equation. There's also the effort.

The planned animation would have been a major escalation in production value. The sophistication of the animations has increased over time, and part of the point of this for me is to keep pushing the envelope, but there are limits to how far you can go. It's good to keep pushing and find your limits and test them, but realistically you'll have to pull back at some point. Because that is what a limit is. A line between something you can do, and something that is literally impossible.

I'm not saying the animation I had in mind was impossible, but it was approaching scary territory. I just made a judgment and decided it wasn't worth the energy, all things considered.

A couple weeks ago my computer broke so rather than go through the rigmarole of getting it back up and running I just bought another cheap computer and copied all my shit over to it to solve the problem as quickly and painlessly as possible so I could just keep working. That went ok.

This as I said tends to be what I do when I run into technical problems rather than bang my head against the wall for days with diagnostics and part-swappings and repairs, and so I can just keep working and doing stuff that's actually important instead of dicking around with electronics.

Maybe it sounds wasteful but it isn't. I just use the old machine as a spare computer, after fixing it up GRADUALLY, at a leisurely pace, where doing so will not present an obstacle to continuous work. So that's what I did. But in this case, I liked my old machine better than the new one, so once it was fixed up and ready to go, I prepared to make a quick hop back over to old machine and keep the new one as a spare.

Except the hop wasn't quick, for one reason. Photoshop and Flash didn't work after installation. (the whole CS3 suite, actually) Still not sure why. At this point I'm guessing the installation file got corrupted somehow in all the shuffle. Of course the road to understanding you're dealing with a very serious problem is paved with all these excruciating diagnostic measures, like uninstalling/reinstalling CS3 a dozen times and even reinstalling Windows a few times in 32 and 64 bit mode to make sure something like that isn't fucking up the works. Particularly maddening since I JUST INSTALLED it on my new machine a couple weeks ago and it worked fine.

And this kind of shit is exactly why I don't fight with computers anymore, I just replace them. Except that policy is really difficult to put into play in a situation like this, where the software is at issue regardless of what machine you use. But actually, I did investigate this approach anyway. It's just a more bitter pill to swallow because Adobe CS5 (their latest, solely offered version) costs literally five times what my computer cost. So I thought, maybe that's ok, maybe this is a good time to upgrade even if it's ridiculously expensive. So a good chunk of time I spent looking into CS5, downloading the trial and all. Photoshop CS5 is a very nice program, pretty elegantly designed, but I discovered it has one hideous flaw that makes it practically unusable to me.

If you use Photoshop, maybe you know about it. I'm getting the sense it bugs a lot of people. It's summarized here.

When I use Photoshop, generally I have 5 or 10 or even 20 documents open at all times. Actually, they're always open, even when I'm not using PS. This is how I work on Homestuck, I just have a ton of pertinent files open all the time so I don't have to spend as much time rooting around for stuff. Having all those files clog up the taskbar is moronic. The "tabbed documents" system is just as moronic, for my process. Tabbed web browsing is a brilliant innovation. Tabbed PS document navigation, not so much, since many PS users like to be able to look at more than one document at once, side by side. Not sure why the developers thought they struck gold with this feature.

I wouldn't give a shit about any of this if they just made these features optional, and allowed CS3-like behavior to exist. And I might even make an attempt to get used to it, if Adobe wasn't asking for nearly $2000 for the suite (or $1700, for just Photoshop + Flash CS5). I'm not going to pay that kind of money on something that just makes me angry to use. Adobe seems to think I'll be delighted to whip out my credit card for the privilege of a mandatory workflow overhaul. Think again bros.

Eventually I just gave up on the CS5 idea, and after undergoing a whole lot more terribleness too boring to mention, I finally just got CS3 working again instead. So that's that dumb story.

This was all pretty aggravating and exhausting, and kinda made me lose my train of thought on the story. Piling this on top of other recent disruptions like traveling and the preceding technical bullshit doesn't help much. Constant forward motion on the story tends to be what keeps the thing living in my head, and I'm finding if you stack up enough major interruptions, it isn't just lost labor time that accounts for delay, but disrupted inspiration, as I have to completely regroup on what the fuck I was even thinking before shit hit the fan.

And it doesn't really help that it's a fairly delicate part of the story where the point is to wrap up a lot complex stuff in some kind of sensible way, rather than the typical mode of casual meandering, where we could hop over to some funny conversation that isn't particularly important otherwise and I could just say, There, there is your content, enjoy. It's really the perfect storm of built up story complexity, commitment to a methodical resolution of everything, radically rethinking long-planned points of execution (i.e. axing huge flash plans, figuring out how to structure/convey them statically), and a disastrous series of technical disruptions. Updates just can't push through this any faster than they are right now.

I drew an initial template, and the art folks were invited to continue in that style, adding new animation frames, characters, etc. All very loosely, without a lot of parameters beyond that. Eyes5 did the Jack, myluckyseven did a Rose frame. There should be more to come.

This was originally going to be a Flash project, but I cancelled it.

Everything happening now, and over the next bunch of pages, would have taken place in a pretty energetic, and much more sophisticated than usual strife animation. Kind of like "strife version 2", for the second disc. I planned this idea months ago, not really thinking much of the effort and time it would eventually require to complete. This is what I usually do, blithely make such ambitious plans, pay the price later, but fight through it with a major grind and honor the original vision.

This was a little different though. Not only was this meant to be a much more elaborate type of animation by my own stakes-raising declaration, with more frames-intensive visuals like a typical 2D fighter, but on top of that, the rate of output had been slowing, and the story flow was already kind of logjamming.

So I had to make a decision. I could either apply what I now estimate would have been two or three solid weeks of serious effort to make this one pretty cool animation, and watch several 100K people sink into a state of despair over the prolonged suspension in content only to have the story advance not particularly far through a totally radical battle scene, or I could scrap the whole plan and figure something else out. The latter is what you're seeing.

Sometimes these adjustments have to be made. I've revised plans before, and had some cool ideas I've scrapped. I was going to include another round in the Dave vs. Bro battle where they used their Sylladexes to wage a hashrap battle (which is why I went to the trouble of making Dave collect all that dangerous shit in his kitchen before climbing to the roof). But I axed that because the battle was already taking too much time to produce and bottlenecking plot advancement. That idea was pretty easily phased out. This is different now, because revising these plans meant I had to change the way a large chunk of the story would be delivered, because a lot of story components were all tangled up in my plans for that animation. So I had to do a lot of rethinking, and much of the solution is what you're seeing now, which is having the scratched disc interfere with the flow of the story, and Scratch taking over narration duties at an accelerated pace while he fixes the disc in time for the end of act. This is in part my way of committing not to doing anymore flash stuff until the EOA, which itself is going to be a very laborious thing and will take a long time to finish.

This is all fine. I don't mind turning my plans upside down sometimes, since it can lead to creative opportunities for handling this stuff. The disc errors, Scratch hijacking the site design while narrating, all this strikes me as in keeping with the spirit of the story and the flexible format. Keeping the story moving is important, but it's not the sole consideration. MSPA for me is about working with loads of fun ideas, both for the story itself and the way it's told. Very often that consideration is at odds with pacing. I do what I can to balance both.

The biggest challenge in this respect by far has been Flash. I'm quite ambivalent on its role in Homestuck. On one hand, it completely changes the way the story is read and perceived, for the better I think. It brings a lot of the most important parts of the story to life, makes for significant dramatic impact when needed, and goes a long way in making this difficult to classify as a medium. One the other hand, it magnifies the production complexity exponentially, and I'm not just talking about the effort the animations require. It affects everything about my approach to the story. Including the whole decision making process, and not in a particularly good way, at least not from my perspective.

The biggest way it affects the process is how it stretches the story out. If I'd gone through with the axed strife animation, that would be an obvious example, pausing the story a couple weeks to make some people fight. But the delaying effects can be more subtle than that. I'll have in mind a certain event in the story which I think should be handled through Flash. I'll know it's coming up, but I might not be ready to launch into that kind of work for whatever reason. Maybe it's too soon on the heels of the last one or whatever. So I'll work on more static panels, because there is never a shortage of plot threads to address or details to develop or funny conversations to write or new fun ideas to put out there. And that's fine really, since I feel like it's all good stuff, but it definitely makes for the long road. I'm quite sure Homestuck would be finished by now if I'd never used flash at all.

There are other weird ways it factors in, like certain expectations it creates. Once it gets in the readers' heads that it's a recurring device for the story, they start to look out for it and expect it in certain situations, compare static content with flash, consider how awesome some static panels would have been if done in flash or how awesome situation X will be if animated with song Y. The potential for disappointment looms constantly with increased expectations. None of this is particularly bad, but if you're the guy responsible for putting together this story, you tend to be keenly aware of it, and it factors into the big puzzle of managing it all. And a big part of that puzzle has been answering the question "to flash or not to flash?"

I've said before, the deeper into this I get, the less I feel like a writer or artist, and more I'm like a producer, managing story decisions weighed carefully against cost of execution. And cost can mean a lot of things. Effort needed, organizational complexity (usually most present in interactive pages), time delay or obstruction to story advancement, stuff like that. This kind of thing doesn't factor in if you're writing something more conventional, like a book. You write in exactly what serves the story, as you envision it. It may sound crazy that's not what I'm doing, but it really can't be anymore, not with these high octane animations in the mix as part of the expected delivery. I have to think like a producer to make that work. To understand what that means, here's an anecdote about Indiana Jones, which might not be quite true but whatever, it's just something I'm vaguely remembering. When Spielberg was going over the script with somebody, it called for a pit full of lions, and he said "whoa! too expensive! let's go with snakes." So you got Indy afraid of snakes instead of lions, because it turns out you can buy crazy loads of snakes for bargain bux.

It would be really reasonable for him to be afraid of lions though. They are huge and hungry and fucking terrifying. Have you SEEN a lion??? Lions would be my quirky phobia if I was a rugged dude with a whip and longing for treasure.

I am not trapped in Canada. I got back on monday night. The grumpy customs guy looked at me suspiciously and considered the threat I posed to this nation for a little while, and then I guess finally decided to do me this rad solid by letting me back into my own country.

The Toronto Comic Arts festival was fun and I met lots of cool people. I lost track of how many buckets I was asked to sign I think after the fourth bucket or so. One time a guy asked me to fill his bucket with a clear fluid he supplied, so I did, and the undertaking was filmed, probably for distribution on the amateur pornography market. Some people kind of tried to sing to me once, and I rewarded their ring leader with a bottle of Faygo (a crate of which was given to me as a gift. I can at this point count on gifts of Faygo, Gushers, and candy corn at any convention with total certainty.) The fellow opened the Faygo with showman's aplomb, and the bottle snorted an angry, umbrella shaped jet of atrocious cola on to himself, his belongings, and all who surrounded him. I showed my contrition by looking suitably horrified.

The convention only occupied the weekend, but in truth its footprint spanned 5 solid days when you account for travel time on thursday and monday, horsing around in Toronto on friday, and may even span 7 days when you consider how useless a person can be on the days before and after traveling extensively. So that is an entire week existing as a black hole in my creative schedule on account of two pretty decent days in Canada. This is probably why I don't do a lot of cons.

On the subject of momentum killers, the preceding weekend my computer broke, so I bought a new one and spent time setting it up. I don't ever try to fix computers anymore. I just buy new ones, and copy my files over. I've learned not to fight with computers over the years. Expending the energy to win these little skirmishes is not worth the years it shaves off the end of your life. It steals a lot of time just to diagnose problems, let alone agonize through solutions. Paying for service and new parts and such also takes time, not to mention money which could be applied toward a brand new computer which doesn't hate you yet. You should take my advice. The next time some device gives you problems, don't fight with it. Just acknowledge to the device, "You win. You are broken. You will be replaced immediately." This is a liberating policy.

The thing is, a computer isn't even very expensive. You can get a pretty alright one for like $300 or $400. My disc drive failed. Yes, a scratched disc. We'll forgo mention of HS themes cropping up in my life cause I don't even know what to say about that. I've had drives fail before, which basically happens for no reason. It's something they do. It's a good thing nothing important depends on hard drives being reliable. Except I guess practically all of modern civilization, but whatever. So I'd have to buy a new hard drive for $100 or so, a fuckin copy of goddamn Windows (which I don't even have, I always just inherit OS's from new machines) for like $200, and jump through all these hoops, or just spend approximately the same amount of money on some dumb pre-assembled machine off a store rack that is hot and ready to go, and remain blissfully uninvolved with a piece of technology's staggering, intractable neurosis. I just copy my files over. When a drive dies, it never actually spoils your data much. It only ever seems to break just enough to make the OS go funky, and difficult/impossible to boot up. And the more you run it, the more it corrupts, which is why you stop immediately, forfeit all hope of salvaging it, and buy a new computer.

Even though that was about as painless a solution as possible, it was still a significant momentum drain, and last week was pretty slow content-wise. So's this one. Momentum drags are pretty common these days. That's just the shape of things, and it's all been fastidiously filed under Oh Well already, so don't worry.

TCAF amounted to about a week long black hole of output, through which not only did you get to not read anything, but I was not even remotely applying effort toward something you will read later. That effort begins only now, as I get my shit together, and puzzle over the plans I left dangling. These plans are usually kept rational and aloft in my mind through perpetual, feverish creative activity. They begin to resemble the overambitious boondoggles they truly are when I'm forced to slow down.

What I'm presently puzzling over is why I decided to leave a Flash project for myself to return to. Not really the best idea. But it'll be done when it's done, even if the gap in the archive from 5/5 to 5/? will probably seem cavernous relative to the eventual payoff.

If you catch me answering formspring questions it means I am definitely making a point of not updating at the moment. FS is one of the things I do to space out. It is where I go to ramble and decompress through various musings, and occasionally humor histrionics from anonymous teenagers.

All I've really been up to is not working on it 24/7. Not working on a thing 24/7 shouldn't really need an explanation. Like nobody goes up to you and asks you why you aren't working on a thing 24/7, because that's a nutty thing to ask someone. Unless you have trained a very large population to expect this behavior from you over an uninterrupted period spanning three years. In which case my strong advice to such a person who has done that is: ???????????????

The animation took 4 days or so, but really it wasn't especially long and something like that should have taken me about 2 days or maybe less if I were working in Hell Mode. But I had a lot of other important things to do which stretched out the time. For instance, watching some episodes of 30 Rock. I also ran some unsuccessful errands, like I went to the UPS Store to mail my stupid broken iPhone back to Apple, because it's dumb and broken and I kind of hate it. But the UPS Store's computer wasn't working or something, so I left. I went back again another day, but it was the same story. I muddled around with some tweens and and cajoled a billion little image files, saved in photoshop one by one and imported into Flash which is technology on par with a broken iphone in terms of raw aggravation factor. I went to Starbucks a bunch of times and bought some coffee, and at one point I netflixed Robocop on the PS3, and wound up fast forwarding through all the scenes where he was sitting around without his helmet on looking weird and talking about his robofeelings, because the movie wasn't really as good as I wanted to remember it being. I horsed around with some cats, by which I guess I mean coexisted with them which is mostly all you do with a pet ultimately. The younger one has taken to nursing on the slightly not as young one, which is weird because she is like her adopted older sister who is barely even much bigger than her. But the older one seems fine with it and actually starts purring, because pretty much every cat in the world is as least partially insane. At some point I realized I should stop shitting around and get down to fucking business. I dug deep down to tap into my inner reserves of determination and strength, and with all of my mettle brought to bear on the task I buckled down and was finally able to watch another 10 or 15 episodes of 30 Rock.

And then I finished the animation.

As for what I did today, i.e. the day after posting it, I don't know. Mostly sitting around thinking about how I want to execute some stuff coming up next, and revising some overly ambitious plans which were certainly made in the heat of labor-addled delirium. Also I did some other stuff. I made some pasta, and drove some cardboard boxes somewhere.

That guy is pretty cool. It's nice reading his responses to the comments, which are delightfully gracious. He seems so genuinely enthusiastic about spreading the word about old victrola recordings.

"That is Wonderful. Do thank Mr. Hussie for me, and also all of you wonderful homestuck fans who appreciate and support my continuing efforts to bring my Historic and eclectic collection﻿ of early recordings to a new generation of listeners.

To be fair, if I were working at "normal speed", updates over the last 5 days could easily have been compressed into one day. I kinda doubt anybody would be urging me to get on with it if that were the case.

Regardless, here is some additional perspective on the matter of the pressing need for plot advancement.

Do you recall that at one point, WV spent about three weeks fucking around with cans in a bunker before he finally blasted off? In Act 1, we watched John launch cakes out of his sylladex for two months before we even discovered the story had a plot.

This is how this works. At times it advances through stretches of unremarkable events wherein characters are given space to fool around. The story then continues to build on the details that accumulate. That is how every story on this website has been created, and the practice has been adhered to religiously.

Sometimes, even in the heat of my most productive periods, these "goofing around phases" still represent a kind of decompression. When I am just not quite ready to ATTACK major plot advancement in the manner that it would require, and it's simpler and more sustainable to mess around, do silly things, and keep production relatively light weight.

I remember when WV was horsing around with Can Town, there were similar murmurs of impatience, and many believed firmly it couldn't possibly be going anywhere that served the story. Nobody could know his big can in the desert would blast off soon, let alone that a year later, for reasons they couldn't yet fathom, thousands of teenagers to smear gray makeup all over their faces because of stuff that happened in this story. What could possibly happen later that would cause this??? Pretty hard to imagine, when you're the guy in December of '09, impatiently waiting for WV to eat parts of a pumpkin, drink Tab, and play chess with himself.

To find out, you had to be in it for the long haul, as you must now be. I will do what I am going to do, and one way or another, it will get where it's headed. It always does.

I didn't even name the Midnight Crew. The name was submitted through a donation command before Homestuck. I named and designed the members of the group to complete the request. It began here, and there are several others.

Like many things in donation commands (zillyhoo, doomsday dice cascader...) the MC was adapted into Homestuck through the elaborate plot devices you may recall, driven by the usual MSPA meta-humor which you have grown to [feel some way about], which at this very moment continues unabated. (Remember the MC was introduced in HS as the MSPA adventure the kids could read if they visited MSPA.com. Then it turned out that MSPA was, in a way, a viewport into the troll universe, where the MC was real, and consisted of Jack & co. as exiles on Alternia.)

But I didn't know about the Morton song until Radiation adapted samples from it into Black, which accompanied [S] Jack: Ascend.

I don't know. I hardly ever read more than half way down the first page of questions. Too many, too repetitive, etc.

But through various channels, I detect certain flavors of reaction, ranging from disappointment to frustration to something faintly resembling outrage, not just at the lack of an incendiary production to mark year 2, but also the flagging rate of output in recent weeks.

These reactions are far from universal, but they exist, and to address them I think an education on why MSPA exists at all is in order. If you see a creator who begins to languish in production of what presumably accounts for his day job, the impression may be that he is falling down on the job and failing to live up to his professional commitment. So maybe this is the source of indignation, re: entitlement, that some may feel when my output falters. The problem is, MSPA is not a day job for me. It is an all consuming lifestyle. Hence, the mirage that is the apparent ease of output for what is at times ludicrous volumes of material is highly sensitive to even slight perturbations in my life situation.

Let me put it this way. You may work a full time job. It may be that something happens in your life that makes your job more difficult, because you are preoccupied. Your work may suffer to some extent, but you can still approximately match what's expected of you, because there is a partition between your job and your home life. You may nevertheless feel your full time job seems to dominate your existence, saps your energy, and leaves your weekend respites feeling all too short. This is not an experience I share, because MSPA is not a full time job. If you have such a job, then I would have to RADICALLY REDUCE my workload to match your level of day to day preoccupation.

The actual quantities involved have always been nebulous and I never made a point of keeping track, but 12 hours per day seems like a pretty reasonable average, since that is just shy of all waking hours. Time spent writing, drawing, animating, or just spacing out at my monitor while contemplating all the moving parts. This is what I did every day, including weekends and holidays, for two years, and to some extent another year prior to that with Problem Sleuth. Only a few weekends were missed due to conventions, and there was a single week off immediately following the infamous "robo smooch", and that's it. (Most of that week was spent wondering why the hell I wasn't updating...) There are other gaps in the archive, spanning days or a week, when I was animating. Those spans involved the usual work schedule, while simply omitting sleep!

Not only is this an unreasonable workload to expect of anyone, it's practically impossible to pull it off. Maybe you can expect some committed guy out there to really buckle down and duplicate that effort for a month or two. But years? Too much can crop up in the white noise of normal life to destabilize it. Momentum is absolutely crucial for maintaining that kind of pace. I find that if I only do an hour of work in a day, I get ten minutes of work done. If I do 12 hours of work, I seem to get 24 hours of work done. This is especially true of animation. Such projects notoriously take a very long time. I feel like because of the crazy head of steam I've built up from years of nonstop effort, I can knock out in days something that might take another animator a week. Or in a week what might take a month. Without that momentum, it's not possible. Starting up Flash cold is excruciating. Getting your head back into the stride of a story wastes energy you wouldn't use if you never broke stride. Without the momentum, the pace reverts to ordinary. Getting distracted by life destroys the momentum.

I've been pretty zealous about deflecting the distractions, even when I move, as I often do. A notable example was last year when I came back from the Emerald City con in Seattle, and found my apartment flooded. The con was already enough of a time sink, so I didn't have much of an appetite for going into personal crisis mode. I just kind of shrugged, picked my computer off the lone, miraculously dry part of the floor, dropped it in a temporary residence, and kept drawing. I think the flood mess occupied about a day of my attention, whereas something like that could easily take up weeks of your time and energy if you're living that "normal life". You know how it is, you come home and find water up to your ankles and go aw fuck, what's ruined, what needs replacing, gotta call whoever and deal with the fuckin landlord about stuff and auuuugh. I just didn't bother with any of that, because it just didn't seem to matter, and I preferred to keep working and not give a crap about all my soggy bullshit. And in retrospect, I guess it really didn't matter.

All of my moves have been similarly characterized by the unceremonious transportation of a computer and a few boxes to a new room, in which I'd continue working as if no change took place, with no service paid to the life that would be lived there, except as a workspace. I moved again recently, prompted by decidedly less dramatic and less soggy reasons than after Emerald City. This time, for whatever reason, I did it differently. I moved the normal way, the way I imagine normal people doing when I close my eyes, whereby more than a car trunk full of utilitarian belongings are imported into the household, placed on the floor, and never unpacked until the next moving day. I am not necessarily PROHIBITIVELY busy, but like I said above, any dent in the momentum, whether its a few trips to Home Depot or Target here and there or somehow waking up to discover I'd absconded from a shelter with two particularly energetic young cats, is something that precludes a pace of output that is insane and often bordering on miraculous.

What I'm trying to convey here is this isn't necessarily any sort of break, or a grand announcement of a big slowdown for MSPA. I'm trying to give you a sense of the reality which made MSPA heretofore possible, and that if for a period of time I descend from an altitude far exceeding the hours of a full time job, into "merely" those of a full time job, IT DOESN'T ACTUALLY COUNT AS A BREAK! And certainly not as any sort of violation in a pact with the readership. Different from what you're used to? Sure. But you should never find yourself in a position where you come to expect, let alone demand, that degree of effort from anyone, even me. If my output "sputters" from 10 pages a day to 1 or 2 or 3, IDEALLY (re: unrealistically) this should not even cause you to voice an internal observation on the matter! And if one is voiced, instead of "oops, looks like Andrew's slipping," it should be "oops, looks like Andrew's being a regular dude for a while."

Not that detecting a pace change is some terrible wrongdoing, since clearly I've done everything in my power to establish these absurd precedents, and people have naturally associated this with The Brand. I'd just like to suggest it would be beneficial to the reader to disentangle enjoyment of the content from the torrid pace its been commonly delivered. Who can say how fast or slow it'll come in year three? Would my assurances even be reliable? Maybe it'll stay at the current pace for a good long while. Maybe it'll soon hasten back to something more typical. Maybe it'll come back FASTER THAN EVER. Who cares??? Do you really NEED this site to be the fastest comic on the block to enjoy it? Are you prepared to contend with the backlash to your psyche that is risked by so fervently relishing that particular property of the comic? What if it's taken away? Don't go boasting to your neighbors that your slave can pick cotton ten times faster than theirs. It's unbecoming. Just enjoy the fluffy yield of his furious hands, while you wait and pray for Abe Lincoln to gently stroke his beard and relieve you of your bigotry.

Primarily it is that Jeffrey Rowland of Topatoco and I think that making these terrible shirts is hilarious, and we are both willing to hinge our entire business models on the production of gag merch.

But this does not mean I made these shirts INSTEAD of other cool HS shirts. You will note that there is a separate store called What Pumpkin. This is the store I use for the rather extensive collection of potential HS merch when we get the time to make/restock it. Realistically, there are just too many possible HS products to bug Jeffrey with all the time, since he is servicing about 30 other webcomis too, so generally I reserve WP for these ideas, while keeping Topatoco mostly about PS stuff, and now it seems SBaHJ stuff as well.

There'll be more HS stuff in the WP store pretty soon, plus a restocking of what's there.

Where is trolling involved when Dave makes self-aware references to the callback heavy style of the story's construction? Where is the intent to agitate? There is no editorial subtext. There is nothing to read between the lines. There is no veiled repudiation, and I am not saying "suck it bitches!" to those who disagree with the callback saturation (those people don't even exist). It is merely a couple of lines of dialogue which are silly and self referential. It is a joke.

It is also not trolling when I leave something on a cliffhanger. It is standard dramatic practice. It is also fairly unavoidable when there are many story threads running at once. You have to switch to others at some point. You also cannot answer every question at once or distribute every payoff when they are demanded, or a very nonlinear story would become very linear very quickly. It is additionally unavoidable because there are few occasions when you don't want to know what happens next. Hence every switch of focus begins to resemble a cliffhanger. This pattern has also been brought to attention through self aware humor, a la 5x cliffhanger combo gags and such. This does not count as trolling either. These are yet more gags of self reference.

There are some moments when trolling comes into play. When tension mounts in a scene and we are being lead to expect something significant, and then you read the word "psyche", that is clearly a form of trolling. When I am dressed up as a troll, and copying large volumes of text into the narrative specifically to spite you, the reader, and I am saying "I am trolling you right now by doing this" it is safe to say you are being trolled. And even this flagrant gesture is one step removed from the act of genuine trolling, through the partition of satire. The entire concept of trolling has been folded into the story as another source of raw material for absurd kinds of exploitation, like computer science, alchemy, sprawling chess metaphors, and suit-based alien romance. This does not mean every joke is an act of trolling, or meta-trolling. In fact, very few are. When you read a simple self-referential joke or have your expectations subverted in in some way and say HUSSIE'S TROLLING US AGAIN, you sound silly. You sound like you don't understand what trolling is, or what I'm actually doing here.

Dave has always been a "genre savvy" character. Remember his whole thing on skepticism in movies and how the dad should believe the kid about the vampire in the closet and tell everyone to get in the van?

He is even genre savvy about the genre which is essentially unique to this story and format, and about the practices of the author.

Also there is no trolling involved, as usual. Trolling is practically never what I'm doing when people say I'm doing it. I would like everyone to replace the term "trolling" with the phrase "doing jokes", such that people will start sounding less ridiculous and less totally wrong when they say their things.

These key dates have actually become EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to nail as the complexity of the projects increases. Problem Sleuth was very easy to key into exactly one year, because the increments were so much simpler. That year-run was the precedent that began most of this milestone madness, and I've kept up with the milestones for the most part, but they start slipping over time. I've already blown a few and had to readjust.

Remember that [S] Descend (end act 4) was originally targeted for 4/13/10, but I ran out of time (EXACTLY like I am now) and I put [S] Jack: Ascend on that date instead. Descend got pushed way back because there was no reason to push it so hard anymore. It dropped around June, then Hivebent started on 6/12, which is now ANOTHER key date!

Things tend to take longer than I think, whether it's a single animation task, or the execution of a string of story events, which are necessary to complete to set up other major events like an end of act, and so on. Meanwhile, time just rages on. I remember thinking at the beginning of '11 that there seemed like plenty of time to set everything up to end it on 4/13. Lo and behold it's already fucking april! We've made plenty of progress, but it's still not there.

Try to remember that as a key date approaches, I actually have much less time to make that work than it seems. To make 4/13 work for EOA5, I'd need AT LEAST a solid week to work on it, probably more. Which means I'd have to get the story up to that exact precipice in less than a week from now, and frankly, I've got other shit to do. As it is, I'll be lucky to pull off anything of significance on the strike of 4/13, let alone the monstrosity that the EOA would inevitably be.

It'll be just like EOA4 (Descend). It'll only happen when it can feasibly, logically happen.

It was originally going to have another scene following the stair climb, but that turned out to be too much to cram into one page, and I thought it would have delayed the the release of the page too much. It had already been delayed enough, not only by the labor involved in making such a thing, but by the fact that I've been pretty busy otherwise. This was not blasted out at the usual rate, neither by me nor Gankro (the programmer). We both had stuff to do.

I decided to separate the following segment onto another page to follow it shortly. It only seems abrupt because you cannot yet turn the page. I think this should be obvious.

If you're reading a novel, you would never say "man, I sure did enjoy page 386. Page 386 was just so awesome until it ended abruptly! What gives??" What gives is that page 386 ran out of paper for words, and the story continued to glide seamlessly onto page 387, for those bold enough to turn and continue reading. Even for those who bookmarked and continued a couple days later! Single pages do not give you all the answers you want, nor do atomic story units in formats less conventional.

Sure. And I think this is because of the diversity in the story. I think if I wanted to do something more formal, that stays in more clearly defined lanes like strictly humorous or dramatic or such, that work would be stronger because I've already tried so much with this. I'd just have to reel it in. There are many things going on here that you would never see in such a work.

I'm sure some look at the diversity of what's here, perceive various violations in literary protocol, and regard this as evidence of storytelling deficiency on my part. Which is fair, because you can only go on what you see. But at the same time I do have a grasp over what I've made, and have the awareness to apply more focus to a work than what's projected through this wide aperture. When tightened, most of those violations would vanish.

I'm not trying to make the best thing ever here. Only something which is very fun, extremely flexible, and serving to accelerate my abilities, my understanding of what a story can be, and my grasp on how people react to things. That is actually a valuable part of the exercise, watching mass reactions in real time, on every aspect of each update. From the minutia, to the big plot turns. There is a very real component of this that resembles a huge social experiment. I'm not just putting pressure on the limits of a story's format. I appear to be doing this with the psyche of the readership as well. I have discovered many obscure buttons which can be pushed. I am taking extensive notes.

I'm working on a project, and I'm compelled to drop every cool idea I have into it. I horse around with format, and break or bend many rules on story construction purposefully. This includes infusing it with meta elements. The meta-saturation of the story continues to fuel my interaction with the readers, and listening/responding to them probably keeps the relationship between the narrative and the reader still feeling like it is an open channel, even though suggestions have been closed for a while.

Everything going on here is experimental and vigorously informal, and this is the consequence.

I think there is definitely hyperbole that gets thrown around when discussing my ability, and I think people tend to drastically underestimate how ridiculously good the various masters were at their crafts.

In fact, I really don't even view myself as a writer. I view myself as more of an illustrator who tells stories, and uses as many tools at my disposal to do so. Writing is one. Drawing and animating are others. The act of telling a story is in essence writing, so that's clearly what I'm doing, but it's still hard to feel like this describes my primary discipline. I've always identified myself as an artist foremost, who's had to push into the territory of a writer and develop those skills out of the necessity that follows unchecked creative ambitions.

I also think there's the risk of media-chafing when selecting such names for comparison. Those writers were established in very formal literary traditions. I wonder what it would look like if you took one of the names you mentioned, dropped him in this period in his prime, and assigned him with a project similar to this? Some satirical, slapdash, media-blurring THING, heavily illustrated and published as fast as it was made with little revision? What if Vonnegut wanted to do that, bought a Wacom and boned up on Flash, and was TURNED LOOSE? Would he knock your socks off? Maybe!!! Kind of interesting to think about.

But the silent Flashes in question are very short. There are no suitable songs on hand for things like that. Shortening songs often feels like butchering them to me.

This issue is a little more complex than just saying "hey slap a song in there, why not!"

Practically every song available already is a pretty long composition, which requires an intensive animation project. I prefer to be sparing with those, because they are difficult. If I make a very short Flash in lieu of a GIF, there will not be a song ready that is suitable. I can get someone to make something for it in advance, but that takes time, and defeats the spontaneous, rapid fire nature of such updates. Musicians can make suitable tracks after it is finished and posted, and I can go back and "retcon" it in. And I HAVE done this before!!! But I don't know if I want to make it a policy. It doesn't feel right slapping sound on everything retroactively simply because I can.

But now that your question has been selected for a response, practically everyone who reads it will regard you as a frothing asshole, unfairly or otherwise. Good thing you're anonymous! I wonder how you would handle a significant volume of negativity directed at you? Given how easily rattled you seem to be, probably not very well.

I find it much more understandable for someone to read SBaHJ and not be into HS. Reading and appreciating HS is a very intensive process which requires a lot of time and concentration.

Whereas reading HS while not studying (yes studying) SBaHJ is less forgivable. SBaHJ is requisite supplementary reading. If HS was a class, I would automatically fail anybody who didn't get an A on their SBaHJ exam.

SBaHJ is absolutely inseparable from HS, and has been almost from the start. If you don't understand this, then you don't understand HS very well. SBaHJ is like the mentally handicapped step brother of MSPA, requiring special attention, but no less cherished as a part of the family. It was originally intended as the chief source of in-house memes for dialogue, but this is ultimately a superficial purpose. Though it only has 20+ strips, it contains a pretty dense and internally consistent language of recurring symbols and typo-driven grammars, applicable as a rich sub-cognitive lexicon for highlighting elusive elements woven into the mythology of the story which tend to be shrouded in the unconscious.

Many times events in SBaHJ "foreshadow" what happens in HS, but this is practically never intentional. It is always retroactive on my part, and quite convenient. Like the vampire strip I drew shortly before Kanaya's death and resurrection. The correlation was convenient, and was emphasized in the comic as a gag. Same with the one with Bro achieving LIFDOFF, passing a cloud labeled "cloun". Soon after, John flew his car by a cloud that showed Gamzee in it. This was unintentional while drawing the SBaHJ, but the connection was soon made in the comic serendipitously.

SBaHJ as a creative process is probably a pretty accurate reflection of my subconscious at work. This may be why it often ties into HS themes yet to develop. It is like I am a prophet of my own story, and these shitty comics are my cryptic messages. I submit to the trance of the JPEGothics, while quaking in the losseldritch throes of the artifact tongues. The resulting imagery is troubling, and AGGRESSIVELY PREGNANT with meaning.

Though most aspects of HS's story construction is exceedingly meticulous, with multi-threaded plot connections established months or years in advance, intuition plays a powerful role too, and may be even more important than the maniacal, overly cerebral stuff. There are occasions where something will just FIT, in a weirdly perfect way, even though I didn't quite intend it. I always seems to be working favorably with the grain of positive coincidence. Strange things with numbers happen all the time, for example, and this is certainly not because I'm a skilled numerologist. The troll's number is 612 because I started Hivebent on 6/12, a tale of 12 6 sweep-olds (13 year-olds). Their names are 6 and 6 letters, like mine. Why is one sweep = 2.16 years? Weird. Why is 6/12/11 exactly one sweep from 4/13/09, the start date of HS??? Also weird. These occurrences are everywhere, and I can only assume they have their root in the turbulent void from which all this comes. The story is in part driven furiously by high level cerebral machinations, and in part at the mercy of the whims of my waking coma. And I, personally, am at the mercy of it all.

Anyway, if for no other reason, this is why you should like SBaHJ, or at least find it intriguing. Frankly, I am quite suspicious of anyone who doesn't find it funny. I am suspicious of their judgment and quality of perception. This is probably because it means their minds are incompatible with mine on a such a profound level. They are at odds with my subconscious.

There is a lot to it. I don't have any trade secrets at all, but if I did, it would probably be the process I apply to those images.

One major tactic: save as jpg, reduce quality to zero, but DON'T SAVE IT YET. Instead, screen capture the preview. Then paste that into the same document, and repeat this process for a while, until you have grown the desired amount of "loss scum".

But this just keeps making the image foggier, which isn't good enough by itself. After that, I usually apply other effects, like strategic sharpenings and other misc. filters. I also use a lot of masking through color range selections, and perform meticulous alterations at the pixel-cluster level.

I don't know if it's the opposite, but it's obviously intended as an absurd transformation to specifically complement Kanaya's.

"Going grimdark" is a phrase which itself is silly enough to qualify as a joke. The ramifications of such a transformation are surely on par with becoming a glowing Twilight-esque vampire called a rainbow drinker. And yet, silly though these developments are, no one can argue they are not awesome as well. The result is the magic which takes place when stupid meets badass.

The whole "going grimdark" thing was something discussed by readers when Rose first started stirring things up with her dark magic. The whole issue was later lampooned somewhat in a conversation with John. In fact, practically every line of the recent updates have been callbacks to this conversation.

I found the point of controversy kind of funny. It makes one wonder, what does "going grimdark" even mean? Is that even a thing? I guess it is, as long as we understand that it probably refers to the metamorphosis of a vanilla character into a brooding gothic cliche, and this is something played absolutely straight in things which are generally terrible. Please note it is not being played straight in this case. [AND YET IT IS. WINK.]

Also, who here is keeping tabs on super hero references??

Rose's shirt has somewhat resembled the Punisher's logo for some time now, without any reason to link her to the vigilante. Let us now note the origin of the Punisher, a guy spurred to vengeance after watching his family get brutally murdered.

Kanaya's transformation/asskicking didn't involve any elaborate flash either. The showdown flash technically was more about the other 3 trolls than her. She just rushed in and beat them all down in a big gif parade. Nothin too special.

There is always a way that a thing can be cooler. Determining what it is and informing the author will never be a spectacular feat!

There's plenty of merchandising going on, but I honestly never make story decisions with the idea that it'll make me tons of extra bux, even though it seems like it with all the rad marketable clothes these dang kids are wearing all the time. I just do what I think is cool and feels right at the time. I have never once done something and said YES THIS WILL SELL SO MUCH MUSIC, or said FUCK I GOTTA DESIGN A SHIRT LOGO THAT'LL SELL LIKE HOTCAKES.

Silent flashes aren't actually new. Just haven't had many in a while. Remember pages like this one?

With these little Rose flashes, I just thought the idea would be a little easier to get across with a short flash than a series of gifs. They were not really long enough in my mind before execution to warrant finding a clip, or asking someone to make something beforehand.

The one where she looks in the cue ball wound up being a little longer than I thought it would, just to pace it right, and I certainly COULD have given it some track with suitable ambiance, but I sort of deliberately checked that impulse.

I just don't think that necessarily EVERYTHING is going to benefit from sound, even though it sure looks like that's the pattern I've established. If every time that preloader pops up, even if only to serve a 15 second clip meant for sequential utility, and we're hearing a tiny mood setting score or little sound effects each time just cause that's what a flash Has To Be, then it feels like it's getting into hokey territory to me. For the larger cinematic pieces, yes those absolutely need sound. The mini ones? Ehhhh, not so much. In any case, the expectation that sound must be delivered with flash or I risk violating my rules is something I find a little bothersome.

The line has been pushed very far into some vague mediaspace frontier. But now and then, I like to remind you that the story still includes every possibility up to that line, including the more primitive things far short of it.

I understand what you mean, and thanks, but I guess there are different types of "wow factors".

At this point I believe the kind you are talking about is a typical reaction to something with strong cinematics conveying interesting developments. That's cool and all, don't get me wrong.

The kind I was talking about was more palpable during ones like WV: Ascend, where the reaction is based on lack of precedent, and the reaction is something like "I didn't know this could be that." Some successive ones had that feel too, like Descend probably, and the first Alterniabound probably did too somewhat, in that the format was such a curve ball. Innovation is still possible, but like I said, there is some element of diminishing returns to this kind of thing.

I'm not saying this quality is essential to preserve in continuing that kind of output, but its evaporation in a project like this does steal a liiiittle motivation for going to the bother. Like I said, I'll do them if I get an idea that sounds like a fun and a worthwhile way to apply time. Which actually isn't much different from how I've been doing it lately anyway.

And somewhere in this equation is the fact that at some point this thing does have to GET MOVING, and Flash projects have notoriously bottlenecked story progress behind them.

Let's try to come to our senses here. The labor involved in making a Flash animation is pretty goddamn ridiculous. I'm approaching the 2 year mark on Homestuck, and in addition to the thousands of static pages and many tens of thousands of words, I am standing on several hours of animated footage. This is, frankly, ludicrous.

Not that there is any regret in this accumulation. But after a point, an assessment has to be made whether such sustained high intensity is worthwhile, and whether it continues serving the purpose it originally had. It's purposes being media exploration, pushing the envelope on story delivery, and so on. The envelope can't always be pushed farther while still justifying the effort. If the effort required increases, while reader reaction inevitably flattens and adjusts to the expectation, then that particular purpose is not really being satisfied anymore. As far as media exploration goes, I think there's probably more than enough dynamism in the animated portion of this work to cover my initial agenda for it (which is to say, it far surpasses it). And as reader reaction catalysts, they probably stopped having the eye-widening impact they once had, where they were very often transforming your understanding of what this story was, and what it could be, and catching people off guard by humbling what preceded it. Without that experiential payload, they become a part of a pretty homogeneous loaf that represents MSPA as a product, something that demands a consistent mouth feel when chewed, and Flash must be tasted before swallowed. This is a situation I am not HUUUGELY interested in committing all of my time to keeping propped up, and Flash animations were not actually meant to be part of MSPA's Pledge To The Consumer.

So all that's really left, and this has been true for a while I guess, is whether I feel like doing a Flash and whether I'll enjoy it. I can say that the end to every act will definitely involve a Flash animation. But beyond that, I don't know. It's possible I might not do a Flash between now and the end of A5.

Or I might! We'll see.

But what might not be fruitful is trying to read the gaps in my schedule like tea leaves, and divine the nature of upcoming output. Often, in the Flash frenzied history of HS's reckless climb, interpreting such gaps in this way has been reliable. Maybe not so much here on out!

Not exactly. The Rift was just what the trolls called the phenomenon that brought Jack to their session. It then became known by its formal name, the Scratch, as we learned a little more about what was going on. We learned the rift was actually called the scratch at the end of Hivebent.

The only aspect of this that was a red herring at all was the implication that the rift/scratch was some generic opening in spacetime that let Jack hop from one session to another. This is what the trolls presumed due to ignorance. Aradia knew what the scratch was (since she was the one who first mentioned it in her private memo), but she was not all that talkative as a mopey robot, and clearly didn't think it was important enough to let anyone know.

We now know the scratch isn't what transported Jack between sessions. We don't know what did yet.

I don't know about having the ending planned from the beginning, but I can say that every time the scratch as been mentioned, and even earlier when it was referred to as the rift, I knew exactly what it was going to be.

The concept of the reset, though heavily disguised until now, is a very old one, and is completely entangled with every aspect of the way the story has been constructed to this point.

I don't have a formula for making likable characters. But I guess character development tends to help.

With Scratch, I think one of the fun things about his recent developments is that they came on the heels of learning that he is part Cal. His identity as a creepy pervert wasn't exactly "set up" before this revelation. Not overtly. But if it was I think it would be less entertaining. We get to watch certain traits of his personality reveal themselves exactly when we now have reason to expect those traits. If he had them before it might have weakened the humor value of it now, even though it would have been more air tight from a characterization and plot construction standpoint. We didn't get to say "DIABOLICAL! So THAT'S why he's a perv!" But HS has enough of those eureka moments already for us to be worrying about that.

Not that his developments are completely off the wall either. He was always a pretty self satisfied guy, with the demeanor of someone who could easily be a coy prankster, who just hadn't revealed those tendencies yet. Much of what he said had the feel of a knowitall who's just messing with someone. Also, he did only talk to the girls. With the exception of the one short line to Karkat. He manipulated them and mentored them in weird ways, and eventually one might ask, why all the attention on the ladies dude??? So turns out that's why, sort of. Of course the original reason was more pragmatic. It was just that of all the trolls, the ones most relevant and dynamic in the story tended to be girls, so that's who he talked to. But later, it struck me as a pretty amusing angle on an omniscient character to be a bit of a creeper, and this is in keeping with his origin.

Remember where Cal came from in the first place? And why he was thrown out of Dave's dream tower?

But all that said I still don't think it's quite right to regard him as an actual pedophile, just because of what sort of entity he is. It's probably more apt to think of him as an all knowing supercomputer that happens to have a gravitation toward young ladies in his programming. Imagine walking up to the computer and if you are a boy it says, hey. But if you are a girl it says WELL HELLO, DON'T YOU LOOK NICE. Thinking of it in these terms helps make it funny rather than outright disturbing.

All the words have significance. Some are obvious already. Some are not yet.

All of the words have personal significance to their authors. H34DS, because of Terezi's double headed coin she uses to decide the fate of others (which, hey! has a SCRATCH in it. ehhh?) 8r8k is a word commonly used by Vriska, as a word meaning fortune (8ad 8r8k) and also something she literally does to 8 balls. t1CK t0ck has significance to Aradia as the Maid of Time, clearly. It has significance to Tavros and his interest in the Peter (Pupa) Pan mythology, and the phrase is unambiguously tied to the ticking clock in the belly of the crocodile who hunts Captain Hook. And Captain Hook has been unambiguously likened to Jack Noir and/or Vriska, who have both gone without an arm and an eye.

The words all have significance to Scratch as well. Tick tock because the guy is associated with a mob of time travelers, duh. Honk honk because the guy is essentially made out of a clown doll. Break heads? Well, this could mean many things...

And let's file this under KIND OF A STRETCH.

Since the thickest book by far is the ~ATH book, it stands to reason most of Scratch's DNA comes from the honk code. Bec's DNA comes from the meow code.

honk honk meow

Is essentially John's silly translation of Karkat's (car cat's) name. John and Karkat, as the two leaders, are the ectobiologists of the team.

A small exception to the pattern. But we can examine a few reasons why it makes sense.

Aradia's quirk is to replace 'o' with '0', making t0ck. Using a '1' for t1ck not only balances the numerology, but adds a binary element to the phrase. Duality/bifurcation has always been a strong theme in the trolls' session. Two teams, two sets of ruins, two universes.

There is also a pretty solid case to be made for why Tavros should represent 1. Aradia has always used zeroes because she had been the "null character", before her resurrection. Sollux on the other hand had always been the character of duality, with his twofold curse. When Aradia came back to life, she lost her null quality, and thus lost her quirk. Sollux lost his twofold curse when he went blind, and lost his quirk too. But he, in a way, assumed Aradia's position as the null character, insofar as 2-2=0. He assumed her quirk. This is aside from the point about Tavros though.

If you list the trolls according to the order of the zodiac, it starts with:

0: Aradia
1: Tavros
2: Sollux

That is, if beginning with 0, which is suitable for Aradia's theme, then Sollux is also numbered suitably as well. That makes Tavros the 1 troll by default. Does the number 1 have significance for his character beyond this? Bet you can think of your own reasons if I left you to it. Here's a pretty good one for me:Tavros is so lame, he's always forgotten to type with the number ruling his existence, and it is only through writing this code that the quirk has been awakened.

Vriska's number is obviously 8. Scorpio is in fact the eighth sign on the list too, assuming we switch to begin counting at 1 from the start in this case. Which we should, because we aren't actually being that literal about assigning a number to each troll. It only makes sense for a few of them. Some of their numbers don't even register on a 1-12 scale. Equius likes 100, while Nepeta is all about 33.

8 has always been kind of a special number in HS, in the same way 413 has, though not hit as hard as those digits have been. In fact, 4+1+3=8!

413 are Terezi's numbers. She uses them as her quirk, as the numerals of the blind prophets. If we are to say Vriska is 8, then Terezi is right behind her on the zodiac list, and she would be 7.

Her code "H34DS" conveniently includes no 1. 3+4=7!!! There's her number, rearing its head.

Where did the 1 go? Tavros has it! It seems writing these codes while sleepwalking has cajoled the true numbers assigned to Tavros and Terezi, 1 and 7, out of their subconscious.

Ok, so some of this sounds a bit like hand waving I'm sure. No single reason here is ESPECIALLY compelling for giving Tavros a 1 on its own, but I submit that we have overwhelmed the jury with circumstantial evidence, and I expect a conviction.

No, not at Cal's conception. But at the beginning, that's not really how I worked. I littered the story with hundreds of details, knowing that some of them would rise to extreme significance later. The bunny was one such detail designed explicitly to rise to significance, though in a way left open ended. Cal was exactly the same. But for those who really understood my M.O., the moment you saw Cal, you probably expected nothing less from him.

Four codes does not necessarily mean a more complicated genetic code, or some kind of weird alien DNA.

Symbols are just symbols. With the MEOW code, the DNA letters were not literally MEOW. They represented GCAT. M=G, E=C, O=A, W=T.

Same with these codes, but more symbols can be mapped to GCAT at the same time. Like t1CK=GCAT, t0ck=GCAT, 8rk=GCA, H34DS=TGCAT. This will work as long as the total number of symbols is divisible by 4*.

The means of creating the code is more complex, but the code itself is not necessarily.

Not that I am expecting this to occur to most people though.

*Addendum:

When I wrote that, the honk codes had not been revealed yet. So additionally, honk =GCAT, HONK=GCAT. An additional 8 symbols, also divisible by 4 to ensure balanced GCAT distribution. Each part is needed to combine to form what is presumably the equivalent of the MEOW code, once translated to GCAT.

This makes for a total of 24 symbols to complete Scratch's code. Is this relevant? Why don't I point this out. It's actually 2 sets of 12, one for each troll, and one for each ancestor, who were created all together in their session by Karkat.

If you want to keep your theorist's cap on, you could then note that the MEOW code only consists of 4 symbols, one for each kid, but not for each guardian as well. It might suggest there are missing symbols, and we don't know the full story about Bec's origin.

Kanaya was obviously always going to be the most asskickingest asskicker who ever kicked an enormous butt right in its big fat ass, because I am a virgo and I obviously can't be affiliated with a lame useless troll.

Also, it's especially fitting, because in reality I am like this huge lesbian.

But then, homosexuality in a society where bisexuality is the norm is kind of a different thing. Rather than being a swapped preference, it is a more exacting preference. Somewhat like a fetish for a particular gender. When Karkat was talking to John about it, he indicated trolls don't even have a word for the orientation. It's not something that appears to have any cultural significance to them. Which might seem odd, but then, they're aliens. Maybe a way to view it is how we view people with more exacting preferences, like certain fetishists. We don't actually have common words to describe most people like that, and their presence doesn't have nearly the same social ramifications which homosexuality does. Humans seem to make a very big deal out of homosexuality, while treating other forms of preference as barely worth noting. When Karkat was <3< hitting on John, the reasonable human response was to say "I am not a homosexual." But the troll response would be more like "Sorry, not interested," without invoking orientation. Very much like a guy with a fat fetish isn't too likely to reject a thin girl by saying "Sorry, I am just this HUGE chubby chaser, so I must decline." (CUE FAT VRISKA JOKES AGAIN)

Not that any of this changes how we view Kanaya. From a human perspective, she's an unmistakably gay character.

It was intentional insofar as I was aware of the possibility of drawing attention to it for humorous effect, but did not.

There was already a Schrodinger's Dave joke earlier, and how much lousy Schrodinger do we even need? That one was funnier anyway, because it was Ricky Schroedinger's Dave, which is not actually funny to anyone who doesn't know what Silver Spoons was, which is probably most of you. And even then, it is only funny in conjunction with Terezi's breakdancing Schroeder gifs.

So what I'm saying is the cat joke both exists and doesn't exist. It is in fact Schrodinger's Joke.

Any time anyone's shoes fly off for any reason I am channeling the recurring scene from Calvin and Hobbes when Hobbes pounces on Calvin at the front door, knocking him out of his shoes and sometimes his socks as well. There was another moment in HS when dad pied John in the face right out of his shoes. Same deal.

But then, I haven't read it, so what do I know? Maybe it's great! Sparkly vampires, damn what a cool idea.

But for the record she doesn't sparkle, she just glows like a goddamn light bulb, which is WAY more awesome than Edward turning into a walking blingee when he gets some sun. It also makes more sense because she is a reverse vampire on account of being a member of a nocturnal race. And it makes even MORE sense because it is a dig at Twilight.

Stephenie Meyer can't even fall back on the Twilight parody excuse to justify her glittering vampires, because the thing she is writing is Twilight in the first place. I am going to email her my condolences. She'll probably think I'm retarded though, sort of like how I feel about people who complain about my dumb shit on formspring. The only significant difference is that I'm right, and she's boring.

I'm really baffled by the source of your confusion here, but the question seems to share a sentiment with some other weird questions I'm reading which demand this [S] page should have gratified them all instantly in the exact way they desired, so I'll answer them blanketedly.

Have you ever watched a movie? Sometimes the setup is as important as the payoff. Ambiance? Tone? Suspense? Bringing to a more clear cinematic focus of prior events? Any of these things familiar?

If we chopped up an old western into pieces and distributed it daily, all those cowboy actors have to put up with Formspring questions yelling GET FUCKING ON WITH IT CLINT EASTWOOD. WE GET IT, YOU ARE STARING THE DUDE DOWN. Things take time to execute and deliver properly.

I think sometimes people think this site is this magic box that all this miraculous shit comes out of with no explanation or process behind it, but I do in fact have to spend time MAKING that shit. The more complex it is, and the more points of interest it resolves, the more time it takes. You wanted a fucking battle royale? Ok, get ready for a week without updates!

The golden goose is a great thing for everybody until down the road you discover you are that guy wringing the bird's neck screaming at it to lay you some more goddamn eggs you honking piece of shit.

All of it was an accurate historical account of events from her perspective. She does not need to embellish on anything because she is the real deal. A very successful and nefarious troll pirate who exploits her powers in battle and romance.

This is one of those things that is equal parts serious and silly (well ok maybe not totally equal). It is in part serious in the sense that you can view it totally straight and read it as a series of events that literally happened, and has implications for the story. It is also in part COMPLETELY FUCKING RIDICULOUS because you are truly, literally reading an excerpt of trashy romance, involving pirates like some Fabio novel, all parsed through a grim troll culture and the strange multi-dimensionality of troll romance.

Once all the dust WTF settles, you can look at it from a variety of angles.

Since this is the ancestor Vriska idolizes, this is probably the exact type of character she'd grow up to be, if left unfettered in troll society. If there is any departure in her inclinations, this is the template she is departing from. We've already seen her try to do her Mindfang impression a few times with mixed results. She tried to get Tavros to kiss her with mind control, but couldn't go through with it.

When put into the perspective of more severe adult troll attitudes, I think it helps make everything the trolls have done so far seem more childish in retrospect. It was hard to gauge, because adult troll life was completely abstract. Hearing a little from one adult's perspective through this romfic shows how big the gap was between their youthful antics and what they were really trying to become.

It also puts a little perspective on why certain relationships are the way they are, seeing how their ancestral counterparts interacted (in this case, Vriska and Eridan, whose ancestor was Dualscar, which was the name of his RP character as well). But we still only have the one example to go on so far.

And on the topic of Vriska reading this thing for inspiration, to me it's kind of got the feel of a cross between a kid learning about a relative she looks up to, delighting in reading some unapologetically trashy romance novel, AND the troll equivalent of stumbling on her parent's porn stash. Which is not to say the entire journal is full of smut. But hey, there it is.

And lastly, you can look at the log as further insight into the nature of troll romance, their near-universal bisexuality, their apparently casual attitudes toward the multiple partners the quadrants demand, the tension surrounding the potential of hopping quadrants and the meaning of envy in this regard, an element of mysterious affection that still seems to surround the hate-based black relationships, and a certain degree of open promiscuity implied by the actions here. IF YOU CARE!

Well, if you have to force a punchline, then the punchline shouldn't even exist, should it? The whole comic shouldn't exist. By extension, there are entire webcomics out there that should not exist. (Won't say which ones tho! hehehehehehehehehehe.)

But really, one problem with normal comics I think is when you have pages chock full of panels, sometimes a lot of those panels just get glazed over by the reader as background wallpaper, even though they may be very attractive if examined, and a great deal of care was put into it by the artist. It's sort of a shame.

With each panel given focus, they demand attention and can have more power individually, and create more surprising statements as navigated through. This is true even if one of my panels is literally just me scribbling bullshit all over it.

And the real HAYMAKER of this format is being able to deliver any quantity of text below the image I want. Anywhere from 0 to 100,000 characters. I can fit entire conversations in one panel which would require HUNDREDS of normal comic panels to convey gracefully. I always found dialogue-dense comics a bit offputting, wherein all the dialogue is stuffed into a lot of ponderous bubbles crowding out the art. With this format, this is not an issue at all. Large volumes of text may coexist with the art innocuously, as if you are reading a true comic/novel hybrid.

It's not about authority though, people are gonna have opinions and stuff, which is all good. Sometimes I say what I think in response. Those are MY opinions, and occasionally, my facts.

How I feel.

Sometimes I feel like I have ruined comics for myself forever. Sometimes I will look at a normal comic, and think to myself, what the fuck are all these fucking panels doing on the same fucking page? SPREAD EM OUT DUDE! True story.

It is my fond hope that I have ruined, or will ruin, comics for everyone else too. Scott McCloud wrote what I am sure is a pretty good book called "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art". One day I hope to write a book called "Ruining Comics: Forever". It will be a 1000 page book, and every page will simply be a photograph of my face.

The whiplash phenomenon is not limited to your perception of Vriska. It is a defining feature of the reading experience, especially lately. It's not a bad thing, in my view. One of the reasons you get on a roller coaster is because the experience is not exactly a gentle one. They build them in amusement parks, because that is where people go to be amused.

Vriska is not designed to be either definitively likable or hateable. Sometimes when you read a story, a character does something which you will take as a message from the author about how you are supposed to feel about that character. When they later do something at odds with that message, it can either be regarded as out of character, or character development, depending on both the reader's perception, and the author's execution.

In this case, everything she does, good or bad, is meant to provide a more complete picture of her as a character, and more thorough context for her actions. Once upon a time, a lot of it seemed purely despicable. But I don't believe either extreme, despicable or sympathetic, is 100% suitable anymore. What exists is a portrait that has complexities, as any character given a lot of time in the limelight should have. That having been provided, which side she falls on is up to the reader.

I am prioritizing that the story continue to be entertaining and funny. That is what it still is, in my view, which appears to differ with the reality inside your own personal factsphere. So be it.

But using Problem Sleuth as a comparison is silly. Problem Sleuth had very little in the way of a plot, and the characters were mute foils for outrageous shenanigans. The dark events, which were rare, happened in a framework in which investment was limited.

The Midnight Crew intermission would serve as a better comparison anyway, since it was essentially a bloodbath. But it's still the same kind of thing. Stick figure characters with no actual personality getting knocked off left and right for laughs. If you ask I apply the exact same standards of "dark lite" to HS, I say this is not possible. Killing a character beyond stick figure depth will necessarily carry more weight, and will be read by some as a turn for the GRIMDARK. So in truth your advice is to kill no one, and proceed gutlessly, or risk being likened to a comic book from the 1990's. I suggest viewing this as an attempt to be edgy and therefore artistic is a pretty shallow way to interpret what is happening.

Looking back on the MC intermission again, it was a pretty prescient segment. It foretold of a great deal of time travel complexity yet to come in the story. It turns out there was a bloodbath in the cards as well. There are many ways to examine past events and not be surprised by what is taking place now. Not the least of which is that these children were introduced as members of a race of psychopathic murderers. Some of your jaws still seem to be on the floor, and I guess I wonder what they're still doing there.

He is slashing his face on purpose. Because I didn't think the erotic submissive asphyxiation fetish death was fucked up enough, I thought a little bit of self mutilation was in order.

I hope at this point people realize that when you punched your Homestuck ticket, or really anything I've worked on, you were signing up for something that runs the risk of getting pretty fucked up. Practically everything I've done outside the confines of MSPA has been considerably more bizarre.

I'm capable of containing the impulse to do bizarre shit when I want to. If you look at some big stretches of Homestuck, you will observe something that is quite tame, often cutesy, and even at times bordering on accessible. But then, to create a well manicured and widely palatable product was never the mission here. It was about exploration, high diversity of concepts and execution and all that, and I guess above all, fun for me personally. (and YOU!) So there are vehicles built into it to support my more usual fare.

The primary vehicle for that was Hivebent, and the entire troll presence in the story in general. It began with a pretty messed up premise. The establishment of a colorful cast of kids from a violent race of psychopaths whose entire civilization centers around brutality and murder, and watching how kids from such a culture relate to each other and come of age. Hivebent began with dark notes relative to Homestuck, and only got darker. The scene with Vriska and Tavros in her quest cocoon was an example of the escalation in fucked up shit. Present events are even further escalation. It was always going to get much worse before it got better.

If you got into this story more recently without knowing anything about me or what I've done before, and feel the story would be better suited without the inclusion of the more bizarre elements, or the downright NASTYTIMES, all I can say is that's not who I am or what you signed up for.

Do you know about Humanimals? Probably most of you do. It's a comic I did years ago. I still think it's hilarious, personally. If you do too, then I would bet there aren't many ways in which our senses of humor differ. But to many it was disturbing, hideous rubbish. In truth, these comics are probably about as unsettling as you can possibly get without resorting to violent or sexual content. (if it appears sexual in nature, that is only your imagination at work, trust me)

I'm constantly mining content from my older work to incorporate into Homestuck. The instances of this are hard to quantify. Let's talk about Equius again. Lot's of people thought he had depth beyond his gags, and that's definitely true. But that wasn't what was relevant about him, to me personally. He was always the troll personification of everything like Humanimals I ever did and put on the internet. (Hence is lusus is basically a Humanimal.) I used to do all sorts of weird stuff, reviewing obscene furry pornography, making weird collages involving horses, and just a whole lot of bizarre shit that didn't make much sense, but I thought was funny. The whole span of these endeavors was quite trollish in nature, and you will agree if you peruse Humanimals. The fact that it puts some people off is part of what makes it funny. So Equius was that entire arena of trollish content, rolled into a character. That's why I was STRONGLY committed to maintaining the integrity of his arc, as I defined it. It was more important by far for me to adhere to his role as the fucked up dude who embodies all that stuff than have him blow it by doing something heroic. He believed he died a death of supreme integrity. And so do I.

Don't get me wrong, he was still a gag character. But this was the precise nature of the gag, an homage to an entire vein of humor I used to deal in copiously. He, like some others, trolled you in life, and then trolled you in death. What happened in between, you ask? Well, that was just you falling in love.

Whistles was a graphic novel I did years ago. It's another thing I've mined ideas from, which have specifically begun to show themselves lately with Gamzee's turn. And oddly, there's some of Whistles rolled into Equius too. If Equius seemed to accelerate to a point of depth faster than others, maybe it's because he was built on quite a payload of founding concepts, all revolving around perversity.

Whistles was about a clown in a circus who was as sweet as could be. He loved his ringmaster, in spite of the fact that the master was a cannibal and a tyrant who attempted to kill him. When the circus rebelled against the master and beat him, Whistles flipped out, killed a lot of people, and absconded with the master into the desert. (nice clown going murderous is obviously what Gamzee imported from this) The recurring theme throughout the whole comic is that every time Whistles has a chance to do the right thing and rebel against his evil master, he can't overcome his loyalty to him. To the point where he offers his starving master his own severed arm to eat. The whole thing is darkly humorous and pretty messed up. Equius imported this insane reverence for the hierarchy at the expense of his own well being. Though with Whistles, it wasn't quite as perverse and didn't have the creepy sexual connotations. (However, at one point Whistles did dabble in prostitution. But when he did it, it was cute!)

I get asked sometimes if I will make book 2, the conclusion of Whistles. The answer is, probably not. It's incredibly time consuming making a graphic novel, and I don't know where I'll find the time. It also probably just gathered too much dust for me to get into it again. But unlike Equius, I did plan on giving Whistles a heroic end. I always intended for him to overcome his obsession with his master.

For what it's worth, I did finish a draft of book 2's first chapter. It introduces a new villain named Sugarshoe who is, get this, another insane clown! If you read through this and recent HS events, it may seem like I'm obsessed with this kind of thing. Not really. Like I said, I just borrow heavily from myself.

Just to wrap up this trivia binge, some other examples of old stuff I've rolled into Homestuck are..........

SBaHJ. I did a few strips on a whim, satirizing someone's comics, about one month before I started HS. I folded it into HS as it's primary source of original memes to be referenced ad nauseum.

The whole Bro puppet obsession was largely sparked by this series of ridiculous muppet comics I did in the forum years ago. One of the comics actually made it in HS, pinned on Bro's door for Dave to find. File this under More Fucked Up Shit I did.

All the wizard stuff in Rose's house, and her wizardfic writing in general, was mostly imported from my own absurd wizardfic I wrote some years ago, a pretty healthy sized book I never quite finished. It was called Wizardy Herbert, and was a very flippantly satirical story about kids and magic, starting out as what seemed like an unapologetic Harry Potter spoof revolving around a magical summer camp instead of a school, and then quickly launching off the plot deep end into some very convoluted stuff of Homestuckian proportions. In fact, there are many ideas mined from this story and injected into Homestuck. Any time you read anything about magic being stupid or not being real or anything like that, that's Wizardy Herbert talking. Zazzerpan and his full Complacency were minor characters in WH. WH is actually extremely similar to HS, in terms of the nature of the dialogue, the blend of utter silliness and dramatic seriousness, and complexity. It feels like such a similar thing to me, this might be the main reason why I'll never quite finish it.

It's the same phenomenon that makes the Joker the most dangerous Batman villain. He's just a stupid guy in a purple suit who thinks murder is funny and stuff. We can't people just shoot him??? He gets away with ANYTHING.

Evil clown powers might be the most dangerous powers a villain can have for this reason.

Some (probably everyone) may have noticed that many of the trolls are loosely or not so loosely related to various super heroes and villains.

Every aspect of him was deliberate. I try to make even marginal characters as interesting as they can be with limited exposure given. But they're still marginal, and he was still fundamentally a gag character in spite of those complexities.

I'm just sort of shaking my head here at anyone crestfallen TO THE MAX about Equius's failure to stake a heroic claim on Homestuck's already IMMENSE plot footprint. Like, seriously? With as big a thing as this story is, people are gonna hold a candle light vigil on my lawn for the GREAT SWAN SONG of the dude whose overwhelming gimmick was fetishistic submission? THERE ARE BIGGER FUCKING FISH TO FRY, PEOPLE.

"Dear Andrew! How could you kill off Equius without any more parting dialogue between him and Nepeta? Or more funny horse pun antics or whatever?? It just seemed so RANDOM! That was so cruel of you, and also horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE storywriting!"

These question-grievances are always no win situations. There are so many conflicting objections, it's hard to take any seriously.

And this isn't even addressing the substance of the objection. So you're saying there is no purpose in characterizing someone who is slated to die? Pardon me, but that's idiotic. You say you don't understand the point in taking "all this time for him"? Where "all this time" is a single Flash page, with several conversations? Seems like overstatement. As for the point of the Flash, how about fun? Entertainment value? Humor? Is any of this registering?

Disappointing? I don't think so. More like suitable for everything we knew about the character. Which wasn't all that much.

This was a character who was introduced with horse porn on his walls. His entire presence in the story was a gag. I think literally every conversation he had was centered around his obsession with the hierarchy, his perverse enjoyment in being bossed around by those under him, and his desire to be subjug(gl)ated by his only land dwelling superior. He mentioned he didn't think he could raise a hand to the highblood. When it came down to it, he couldn't, not even to save his life. Such was the extent of ridiculous submission fetish. He was devoted to the caste system to a fault, and he died for it.

To be disappointed is to crave a more challenging or heroic death. Which I guess is fine. But to crave a scenario in which a more dynamic duel occurs and he rises as some sort of hero would be overestimating the relevance of an utterly marginal character, someone designed to be not much more than a really strange piece of an ensemble cast. What he contributed to that ensemble was, as I said, completely centered around a gag, and I stayed true to the gag to the bitter end. His death was as much a sight gag as his introduction. This effectively concludes his arc as a minor character. (OR DOES IT????)

I think of the big picture, and like I say all the time, I consider how it reads straight through as opposed to dripped out tortuously for day to day analysis and second guessing. In the slow motion of present moment, the readers deal in countless WOULDN'T IT BE COOL IFs, but each of those is lacking broader vision. I'm the one keeping track of the big picture here, and if I happen to mention that Equius going out with a bigger bang would have been kind of dumb, like so many other things on people's wish lists, I guess you just gotta trust me!

Everything I'm doing is awesome and is unequivocally the right thing to do. Fear is for cowardly stupid babies who take massive dumps in their baby ass diapers, thus filling them with huge piles of gross, baby ass shit.

If I want an outcome to be less guessable then I distribute the foreshadowed data more carefully and cryptically. Practically nobody ever guesses stuff I seriously don't want them to guess.

Other times I leave more obvious bread crumbs to let certain outcomes be more guessable to the public. With the whole Kanpire thing I think I was pretty much beating people over the head with foreshadowed elements, including a brazen link to a SBaHJ comic in which Jeff appeared as a vampire directly below the scene of her demise. Hence her resurrection could safely be conducted to a chorus of NO SHIT!s with a few smug CALLED IT!s chiming in for backup, oh and also some HELL YEAH VAMPNAYA TIME!s working their way in there. This is not to say the outcome was a lock, because there is always the possibility for red herrings, and enough of those have been established so that you can never feel completely safe with a prediction. That is their primary value. Seriously, it isn't just messing with people. Making a story unpredictable has a lot to do with showing you are capable of doing practically anything at any time. Sometimes you bluff, and sometimes you play it straight. It's a little like a poker game. If you do too much of one or the other, people can read you easily. Even the silly self insert stuff has benefits in this regard. Predicting what's to come in the story is no different from putting yourself in the head of the author. If the author paints a portrait of himself as kind of a loose canon, either through a volatile narrative, or in an absurdly literal way as I do with the AH nonsense, that will be the consequence.

Part of the fun of a story is its unpredictability, and this one has had plenty of it so far I think. Unpredictability is a significant basis for suspense, and I'm sure has other benefits we could examine. But I think there is also enjoyment value in occasional predictability, or rather, guessability. Setting up some obvious clues, and running with them to their logical conclusion. It's like throwing the reader a bone, particularly those who may be prone to feeling a little overwhelmed by getting perpetually outfoxed by the narrative. Another example of that was Jade's penpal letter. I designed it so that the clues would scream GRANDPA GRANDPA GRANDPA, and of course that's what most people were guessing. And the guess was very much on the right track. But that doesn't mean it was safe from another twist. It was her grandson, which is an outcome still compatible with the original clues, in a way. And while managing to be surprising, and not particularly guessable. So in that sense I guess that development had the best of both worlds. Letting people pick up on some more obvious clues for a change, and still delivering a surprise.

How guessable something is also relates to how close to the event you get. Prior to Eridan's entrance into the room, and even during, the deaths were completely unguessable. After Feferi's death, Kanaya's becomes considerably more so, but still quite uncertain. After her death, all bets are off. Not only do all deaths thereafter become guessable, but in some cases, "predictable". That's because it was the line between a series of shocking events, and the establishment of an actual story pattern. The new pattern serves a purpose, as a sort of announcement that the story is shifting gears, that we're drifting into these mock-survival horror, mock-crime drama segments, driven by suspense more than usual. The suspense has more authority because of all the collateral of unpredictability built up over time, as well as all the typical stuff that helps like long term characterization. But now that the pattern is out in the open, following through with more deaths no longer qualifies as unpredictability. Just the opposite, it would now be playing into expectations, which as I said, can be important too. This gear we've switched to is the new normal, and any unpredictability to arise thereafter will necessarily be a departure from whatever current patterns would indicate.

I didn't even really plan the ball dropping thing until shortly before New Year's. I just make anything fit with anything. They are often crimes of convenience which suggest premeditation. It is the way many aspects of the story are put together.

Dropping the ball New Year's-style wasn't really enough. I also wrung a callback to Jailbreak out of it,

Wherein the huge pumpkin rolled off the tower and settled nearby a stump, which through MSPA lore has always been affiliated with suicide. This subject was pertinent to Jade and Jadesprite's conversation.

The fellows in Jailbreak even had a goddang harpoon gun, just like Jade. But... I didn't get to work that in. Not every idea I have gets worked in, if you can believe it.

And one final note, this whole thing neatly solved the problem of building up Jade's house. I had long wondered how I might handle that, with it's unusual design. I concluded the best way was to knock off the tower/ball part, and build up the blockier structure.

Some people regard the zodiac realignment as having stunning implications for the HS universe. It does not.

The 13th sign has always existed in more obscure interpretations of astrology, and I have always known about it. The diehard HS theorists have been wise to its existence since the trolls were first connected to the zodiac.

This means the 13th sign has always had the potential to emerge in the story in some way. It either will or it won't. That hasn't changed at all with recent news.

This scene was essential. It brought closure to Rufio's arc, who was clearly the third most important character in Homestuck. He died a tragic figure, and the final embrace between us pushed all the right literary buttons. I hope you aspiring storytellers are taking notes.

I am probably conveying the impression that I am planning on resorting to it much more frequently in the future than I really am.

Some people love it, and some people hate it. I wonder what conclusion I should draw from this schism in reception?

How about:

pf?f?f?f?f?f?f?f

I view them as little opportunities to do funny things, sometimes serving as transitions both in mood and story direction, and yet another device with which to keep things light and ridiculous in a story which I refuse to drag all the way on to serious turf, even if I threaten to at times.

You could view me as a sort of "host" of the story, touching on recent themes in silly ways. Sometimes story's have such players - in the story, but not actually a part of it. If I were to influence the story events directly, that would be a different type of self insert approach, and one I have no interest in. If I have any impact on the story at all, it will be through an explicitly unobtrusive mechanism.

I have no problem saying so, because that's not actually a point of suspense I care about.

I've heard something to that effect. Someone can go ahead and spread the rumor that I like Adventure Time too. I'm not sure how such a rumor would start without me deliberately prompting it, because it centers around the act of me watching TV by myself, and no one is the wiser.

I've been trying to shake off all of my fans so hard for so long with my every story decision, but they are all such tenacious sons of bitches. I am the mailman. You are the yappy little dog. This site is my pant cuff.

As for recent stuff, if it will cause people to leave, then they haven't left yet. More people visited the site yesterday than ever.

Remember the very first time we heard from Eridan? It was a conversation with Kanaya.

GA: Can You Just For A Moment Entertain The Thoughts Of One Untouched By Megalomaniacal Derangement And Tell Me Why Id Want To Assist You With [Genocide]
CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable
CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

No way. That movie didn't invent time travel complexity nor is it really close to being the most compelling implementation of those concepts. It was a pretty decent movie, but the only thing it actually influenced were those time trails in the Felt arc.

Complex time travel stuff is something I've always thought about. Actually, about ten years ago around the time when that movie came out, my friend Jan and I (who I did the Star Trek edits with) worked for a while on a screenplay for what we were slating to be the most maniacal and complicated time travel movie ever. It was called Copy/Paste. We were essentially working on Primer I guess, a few years before Primer came out. It was pretty close to being done, but I guess we lost interest. Then later Primer came out, and we didn't need to bother with that anymore. Then 5 years after that I started Homestuck, thus rendering Primer obsolete, in a flourish of silly jokes. (????) (YOU DECIDE.)

I'm not even sure I do compared to a lot of other well known internet creators, but it doesn't matter.

Feelings-wise, I'm pretty much unflappable. You might as well register your grievance with a brick wall. And in some cases, negative opinions only fuel in-story "rebukes", but that has more to do with mischief on my part than actual retaliation. And I am prone to finding that funny, whereas OBVIOUSLY the critic will not, and will be inclined to register additional meaningless grievances. It's all good.

A statement that I think encapsulates my attitude is, all things being equal, which they aren't, why is this guy's opinion better than mine?

First of all, the situation is very, very far from being equal. I don't think much hubris is required to believe that ME vs. RANDOM INTERNET GUY is not close to a fair fight.

Second, even if the metrics tracking quality thought broke even between us, it is merely opinion vs. opinion. I'll side with mine, thanks.

Opinions aren't even real things. They are ghosts made of thought. But lots of people on the internet, especially grumpy ones, treat theirs as absolute reality. Which can be pretty funny to watch. Or terrible. Re: youtube comments.

If you're a creative type who struggles with how others receive your work, I might suggest embracing the attitude above. But before you go too far with it, you also might want to try real hard to be good at something first.

It is extremely hilarious to me, especially when put in the light of his arc as an utterly useless, whimsical stoner character, and all the goofy fan stuff made about him, and knowing about the turn months ago while people had no clue, and the reasons go on.

I just think a wide range of stuff is funny. If you say I lump too much under humor, it really only means we don't share the same sense of humor.

I think it can be pretty interesting how a single line in a story, even one that's seven words, can dramatically alter the the perception of everything that just happened.

In this case, I think presented on the heels of the deaths, it created a weird blend of sudden fear, as well as a contradictory emotion of hope, that MAYBE we haven't seen the last of one of these characters, even if the implications are ominous.

There have been a couple others sprinkled about HS. I think tvtropes calls them WHAM LINES or KAPOW STATEMENTS or whatever. (i am not even busting on the tropes here, that's a pretty legit thing to diagnose)

But really, I mainly like that page because of the text highlighting slow-roll. It was a fun preexisting mechanism to employ for suspense.

The spectrum of opinions about everything has gotten so wide and so volatile, I can do nothing but exist in a perpetual full body shrug.

Consider that

1) This story now deals with a more diverse body of concepts than most you'll ever read.

2) The readership has grown immense.

The net result is opinions opinions opinions opinions opinions. At this point I just go bleary eyed at even the whiff of someone's problem or how I'm doing shit wrong or how suddenly YES he's back on track!!! In a way the raging diversity of opinions helps me block it all out and focus on the only thing that really matters, which is my own opinion on what's funny and interesting.

Yeah, so it wasn't a PRECISION STRIKE ANALOGY I guess? I was just pointing out a sad thing in a funny show. In any case I kind of disagree. I believe there was humor in that moment. You just need fine tuned instruments to detect it, like some of the things happening here now and then.

Why the death scene honks? Because this story has always dealt in That Kind Of Thing. Sometimes a sad moment is played totally straight (like Jade's letter to John). Sometimes, or often, a sad or violent moment will be accented with humor, if not played humorously straightup.

The bottom line is, if you have to ask, I honestly can't imagine that you understand much about MSPA.

I gave them all troll handles well before they ever came close to being real characters, but those names always set up the parameters for where I could drive the characters thematically when continuing to develop them, if inclined. So yeah, this was always a strong possibility, without necessarily being 100% committed to it the whole time. Regardless, there was some groundwork set up for that possibility should I decide to run with it, which I did, and the decision was made quite some time ago.

Same with others we've seen recently. Kanaya had the theme of virginity due to her sign, which when you think about it, is a pretty TOUGH CONCEPT to shape into coherence for a character in an ensemble like this, but I worked it by bonding her to matriarchal themes with her virgin mother grub lusus, and the role she inherited as progenitor and caretaker of the matriorb, and more specifically, recently showing the futility of that role, as the concept of chastity is not particularly compatible with successful breeding. When she found the key to release it, it was a sign that all along it was not meant to be used, but destroyed.

Eridan was originally cast as someone dangerous and genocidal, but those qualities were never illustrated and became easily dismissed as a joke as his whole character seemed to revolve around failed romantic aspirations for so long. But they came back, reminding us they were driving forces behind his profile. (His name, caligulasAquarium, was also tied to his various romantic obsessions, particularly the need for a rival, which is bound to the caliginous quadrant, another word for dark.) Ultimately his dreams of genocide were realized by being the one to destroy the orb, which appeared to always be his intent for "helping her" with it, making his preceding conversation with Kanaya much more detestably villainous than it seemed. In doing so, he destroyed hope for the species. This is his final interpretation of his role as the Prince of Hope. Not as one who fights for hope, but destroys it. He's certainly the worst kind of bastard this story has to offer.

Both Eridan's and Gamzee's dangerous sides were heavily masked by the long adherence to their roles as one note gag characters, and made it very difficult to predict these outcomes seriously. A few days ago, nobody at all is guessing Eridan walks into a room and kills two characters. And before this page:

I'm not going to pretend I didn't think it was a very sad event. Feferi was one thing, as a pretty tangential character. But Kanaya was the one that hurt.

Sad things happen in stories. Even funny ones!

Probably the most memorable episode of Futurama for me was the one where his dog waits for him on the street corner for years, until it dies. And then? THE END.

That was awful! I don't know anyone who ever watched that episode who wasn't emotionally crushed by that ending. Almost to the point where it was unbelievable they made such a thing happen. I was not alone in speaking to the TV: "Futurama, what are you doing to me? FUTURAMA??? You're not supposed to do this, you're FUNNY!!!"

And yet, that episode was great! Even the ending was great, all things considered. In retrospect its very gesture was sort of darkly hilarious.

I'm not exactly comparing this character death with that moment, but just pointing it out as an example of a piece of entertainment which I believe successfully blended emotional tones. That's what's been going on with HS for quite some time.

In fact, Futurama always struck me as a really good example of something that did that, and I can think of very few other examples. Futurama was perpetually hilarious, while doing a pretty great job of making you care about the characters and what happened to them. It actually successfully pulled off a lot of poignant moments, not just dog killings. I'm trying to think of of other comparably humorous pieces of entertainment that worked a serious side well and not thinking of much. The Simpsons, not quite. Certainly nothing of Family Guy's ilk. (ok I'm really just thinking of TV shows now) Arrested Development could be a good example. Certainly off the charts in hilarity and characterization, though in hindsight I don't think it ever laid the drama on all that thick. It usually played its serious notes to set up gags, and often shortchanged drama by making continuity itself a gag (NEXT TIME ON ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: jokes jokes jokes)

If I had to grope for another example, I might reach back years and years to something called Red Dwarf. Which was a British scifi comedy tv show. But not the show, the book! The novelization of it was my first exposure to it, and when I was a teenager I remember thinking it was the funniest, greatest shit ever. It might have been my teen goggles tinting it though, I really don't know how it would hold up for me now. I didn't even know it was based on a show, and later when I saw it, I thought it was good, but not as great unsurprisingly. Oddly, the concept was essentially the same as Futurama. A guy is frozen in stasis for a long time, wakes up in the future. But he's the last guy alive, a la Hitchhiker's Guide. I always liked this way better than Hitchhiker's though for some reason, which I was never as gaga over as so many seem to be. This story struck me as not only funnier, but more heartfelt, and really captured the essence of the lonely journey of the last human alive, alone in a giant space ship with his idiot hologram friend.

Thinking back on it, I'm probably weirdly influenced by that series in ways I'm probably not even aware of.

People tend to be pretty emotional creatures and I know that some people shed tears over much lesser turns in a story than this.

So knowing that, I guess there is something a little weird about pulling the trigger on an event which I know perfectly well will cause plenty of people to cry ACTUAL TEARS, most of which are probably perfectly nice teenage girls who I have no business affecting in this way at all. To those people I guess I'll have to offer a real apology, because I'm not actually out to ruin anyone's day.

But when you're making a story with any sort of dramatic clout, even a largely humorous one, I don't think it pays to be gutless. Both in terms of reader reaction, fear of sparking sadness, anger, or bad reviews, and in terms of being overly precious with your characters and ideas, to the point where it becomes obvious you're unwilling to mess with anything or put anyone important in real danger, which does a lot to kill suspense.

But that's actually a pretty common way to construct a story, to the point where we are all extremely used to watching stuff where heroes are in no real peril, and because it's so common we can accept and enjoy it. This also makes it more shocking and emotional when a story steps outside of that comfort zone.

But it's only emotional if people are invested in those threatened. This is one reason why a lot of horror movies can be so ineffective, grisly moments notwithstanding. Rosters are knowingly introduced for the slaughter, with only lip service given to investment in characters. And even if approached skillfully, there isn't even much time to win the hearts and minds of the audience for the full cast.

But this is a little different. We've spent a lot of time with these characters. And if the threat to their lives seems like a sudden direction, I'd suggest that doing it earlier or more gradually wouldn't have allowed it to mean the same thing.

The longer I do this the more I'm struck by how radical the difference is between the experiences of reading something archivally vs. serially, both for the reader, and the author if he's prone to sampling reactions frequently as I do. For the reader especially, I think the experience of day to day reading is so dramatically different, they might as well be reading a different story altogether.

The main difference is the amount of space between events the reader has, which can be filled with massive amounts of speculation, analysis, predictions, and something I guess you could call "opinion building", which can have both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, these readers become more closely engaged with the material than archival readers can be, zeroing in on details and insights which might be overlooked otherwise. On the negative side, I think that excess mental noise the space between pages allows can potentially be a bit suffocating, and put a strain on the experience the material was intended to deliver.

The archival reader always has the luxury of moving on to the next page, regardless of how he reacts to certain events, and thus can be more impassive about it. That internal cacophony isn't given time to build, and if there are reservations about a string of events, whether due to shocking revelations, or questions over the narrative merit of something, or really any form of dissatisfaction, all he has to do is keep clicking to see how it all fits together, and can make a more complete judgment with hindsight.

The recent pages had me particularly conscious of the nature of serial delivery. The whole scene was rolled out over the course of a weekend, first with Feferi, then Kanaya. When Fereri dies, this registers as one extremely dramatic event. Cue the waiting, speculating, worrying and all that. When Kanaya dies a day or so later, it registers as a second dramatic event! Again the scrutiny begins which the space allows. Is this all too much? How do I feel about this narrative turn? Is this setting a trend for a bloodbath? Does that serve any purpose? The reader projects into the future, does a little unwitting fanfiction writing in his head, and may not like what he sees! All this activity becomes the basis for opinion building, which is sort of the emergence of an official position on matters, good or bad, which is only able to flourish in the slow-motion intake of the story. That official position can be a very stubborn thing, especially when it's negative, and seriously textures the way additional developments are regarded. It's really hard to shake a reader off an entrenched position on a matter, even when it was formed with an incomplete picture.

Reading the same events in the archive is quite different. Very little of that inner monologue takes shape. And while the events are still shocking, and the reader may raise his eyebrows a mile high, he then simply lowers them and keeps reading. In fact, because of the reading pace, I would suggest these two deaths actually register as only ONE DRAMATIC EVENT! One guy snaps and kills two characters. In the flow of straight-through reading especially, it is quite startling, tension-building, and can only serve to propel the reader into further pages, at a pace which suspends the experience-compromising (augmenting??) play-by-play.

But like I've said, I don't think one way of reading is necessarily better than the other. Both have plusses, and obviously I choose to make this serially, and I play off plenty of in the moment reactions. But I tend consider the archival experience more, because when all is said and done, this thing has to sit on a server for years to come, waiting for new people to find it.

It is not about challenging myself to find new elaborate ways to make death impermanent either.

It's about making something entertaining.

Every decision I make is with the intent to produce something entertaining, whether due to humor, an elevated sense of suspense, promoting investment in characters, advancing intrigue, or what have you.

It would have been completely ridiculous to black out all the timelines for the trolls who were going to die. Readers would have a checklist in advance, and that would be boring. This reason itself is more than enough to excuse that minor technical oddity with the Trollian interface.

But if we really need an explanation, who's to say that feature is permanently enabled? Maybe there's some obscure checkbox somewhere in the application that says "Show who's dead."

This Flash page is an appropriate length for the purpose it served. The first Flash game involving the trolls was inordinately long, taking something like 30 minutes for a player to feel sure all possibilities have been exhausted. But its length provided a good way to demonstrate the format's capabilities.

It set a precedent for a game of that length, but not a trend. There's no reason to expect they should all be. These are just individual pages in a story after all, and my intent for the format was always to make the games about this length.

The battle at the end did mark the end of the game. There was nothing more to it, and I don't think it needed to be especially explicit about that. You could try mashing the spacebar during the battle or whatever, and observe it did nothing. The prompt at the end to restart tells you it's over. What else is there to suggest there's more? Aside from an expectation that since it feels like a fully functional game, it should behave like one rather than what is essentially a shallow simulation to hit a few story points.

But that's one of the pitfalls of mixing these types of media. While flipping through pages, you switch from your "story reader's mind" to your "game player's mind", which expects different things. Having played many games, we grow to expect fully fleshed out, complete gaming experiences from whatever we play, even if not consciously. These little in-story fragments can leave us a little puzzled, because they are incomplete, and the instinctive game player in us finds that a little frustrating. But I view this as a good thing, and wouldn't seek to improve it. The clash between those two mindsets of media consumption demonstrates we're engaging with something unique. It's not an experience you have with other forms of entertainment.

There are actually clues about Jade's awakening in her conversation with Tavros, in retrospect. If you read between the lines, and draw from what we now know about Kanaya, you can make a decent guess about what happened.

GG: when i was REALLY young, i was sure the doll sitting across from him did it
GG: and for a long time i was terrified of the evil blue girl!!!
GG: she sort of haunted my childhood and i had trouble sleeping for a long time

She complains about insomnia while young, just like Kanaya did. When Kanaya was put to sleep by Scratch, her insomnia ended, and she woke up. We also know Jade did not have trouble sleeping for very long. Vriska started putting her to sleep to test out her powers.

Match this up with some remarks by Kanaya:

GA: It Was Saddening To Learn My Fortuitous Awakening Had Been The Product Of A Nefarious Ploy
GA: Youre Lucky That Your Awakening Probably Had No Such Entanglements
GG: jeez, i hope not...

There are actually clues about Jade's awakening in her conversation with Tavros, in retrospect. If you read between the lines, and draw from what we now know about Kanaya, you can make a decent guess about what happened.

GG: when i was REALLY young, i was sure the doll sitting across from him did it
GG: and for a long time i was terrified of the evil blue girl!!!
GG: she sort of haunted my childhood and i had trouble sleeping for a long time

She complains about insomnia while young, just like Kanaya did. When Kanaya was put to sleep by Scratch, her insomnia ended, and she woke up. We also know Jade did not have trouble sleeping for very long. Vriska started putting her to sleep to test out her powers.

Match this up with some remarks by Kanaya:

GA: It Was Saddening To Learn My Fortuitous Awakening Had Been The Product Of A Nefarious Ploy
GA: Youre Lucky That Your Awakening Probably Had No Such Entanglements
GG: jeez, i hope not...

The conflict between the kingdoms is regimented. There are rules, like in chess, though much more complex. It isn't necessarily all out war, except for what takes place on advanced stages of the battlefield. If the queen is in power, she leaves them alone. Killing them would be improper. If Jack is in power, he clearly has no problem with it.

And there's potentially more to it than some kind of etiquette. Though the Derse dreamers are heroes, they still serve as emissaries to the dark gods, who presumably tend to be opposed to the goal of creation, like Derse. There always remains the possibility that the Derse dreamers will carry out the agenda of the gods without understanding what they're doing. To kill those kids before that would lack strategic foresight, something a queen has.

The monitor can only look at the present. You can only try to appearify a frog and hope for the best. If the frog appears (bad), then that frog was free for the taking. If slime appears (good), then destiny had future plans for that frog, one way or another.

The other appearifiers had certain limitations too. Like being locked on particular times and targets.

I don't think it was a direct inspiration, but I'm sure it crossed my mind at the time.

This is probably how most kinds of inspiration work. I hardly ever come up with an idea directly inspired something else (unless it's something I did, in which case I do it almost constantly.) But then after I have the idea, I may immediately think of something that's kind of similar from another work. I may then modify the idea to make it more reminiscent of that thing, if I feel like solidifying that particular reference. The Donnie Darko style past/future trails in the intermission might be a good example of that. Or, I may attempt to stifle similarities if the reference doesn't interest me.

The chocobo breeding thing always struck me as a really solid example of a side quest in a game. Pretty tedious, definitely optional, yet leading to major boons far beyond the normal scope of the game.

So in that sense, frog breeding was always supposed to be reminiscent of a fun side quest. And yet, it's still absolutely essential to completing the game's objective. So it's not technically a side quest at all. Only in spirit.

This question would exist plentifully regardless of what animal was selected. Knowing this, I don't think it's a very interesting avenue of discussion right now. Are we to weigh the universe containment merits of frogs, vs. say, bears?

The definitive answer, as of now, is that any definitive answer would be pretty boring.

But there are nevertheless some reasons. And more important than the reasons for the decision is to notice how thematically entrenched frogs have been in the story for a very long time. All the mechanics of this, the genesis frog and the frog breeding stuff, was conceptualized well before the end of act 2. EOA2 was when we first saw the frog ruins, remember? An idol of the embodiment of a universe to be created, positioned where Skaia would be, surrounded by four towers representing the planets. There was no basis for speculation on why a frog stood in Skaia's place until now. This has probably been the slowest boiling mystery in the entire story. After a while, I think prolonged, relentless exposure to certain symbols and aspects of a myth start to wear down the need to justify why they exist. They exist simply because they exist, like the features of fables we've all heard a thousand times.

And finally, in processing the "why frogs" matter, it does help to understand the mentality I have in coming up with all ideas for HS. The idea from the start was to come up with a very elaborate, fantastical and ridiculous creation myth. Some ideas are quite esoteric, some are quite passable for more conventional works of science fiction, and some are very silly. Most are a combination of these. Most of the time, the silly stuff is not so outrageously silly that it can't be workable in a serious way too when needed. That adequately describes the concept of a universe existing inside of a large frog bred and genetically engineered by children, I think.

The Tower of Babel did come to mind. There are many symbolic aspects you could find in it, many relating to ascension. It also put to use the basic idea of house building, inspired by Sim games, by tying it to a more obvious goal, to reach the gates, and then reach Skaia.

Obviously it's pretty easy for players to "cheat" and invent means of flying to skip the arduous climb, but as with many things, there are still hidden reasons for why the building is necessary which haven't been revealed. And if nothing else, it does convey the way the game is "supposed" to be played under ordinary circumstances, with kids making these insane vertical journeys through their houses, followed by fantastical horizontal journeys through their lands.

Also note that there are many, many ways in which the concepts if Homestuck were influenced by Problem Sleuth. The Cathedral of Syndetic Ascension was two huge towers meeting in the middle of the universe. Climbing the towers was a significant quest for the four heroes in PS. The consorts were always meant to parallel the silly members of the four kingdoms.

Another detail of interest: note that there was a volcano next to the cathedral which played a significant role in the story.

They look similar because all the outfits look similar. They look similar to John's as well, though his is a bit simpler. The differences in the designs are small details. Like shape of hood, footwear, etc.

Metamorphosis is clearly a significant part of troll biology, and therefore ingrained in their mythology. They've got cocoons everywhere, and are often likened to insects through biological terms. The wings have nothing (we know of) to do with troll adulthood. But have a lot to do with their perception of what ascension should be, which is the culmination of a pupation process. Which is why some may look to fairies as an ideal, or rule them out as fiction on account of the ideal they represent. Ascended trolls in this game are essentially magical fairies.

Humans do not have a good analog for this though, and enjoy no biological upgrades. Only powers and fashion.

At countdown mark 3:14, Vriska woke up from her nap. It is not when she impaled him.

At mark 2:41, he landed, DEAD. Impaled shortly before.

In the half hour between, there was apparently some unseen messing around. Tavros perhaps squirmed at the bottom of the stairs some more. He and Vriska took a moment to make a couple of useless replies to a memo, on the page you cited.

She did have an extra life. She had a dream self all along. It just wasn't in a tower. It was sleeping in a crypt in the center of Derse, which essentially functioned as her Quest Cocoon.

She is a special case with respect to having a dream self (like Sollux was, who had two), and also with respect to the god tier resurrection.

The same rules couldn't apply to her, since she's the only character who's been dead since long before beginning the game. She couldn't resurrect the usual way because she was already dead.

So she has a different set of rules to suit her unique circumstances. We were lead to believe she didn't have a dream self, because she was dead, and because she didn't have a tower. But she was in the crypt the whole time, on her sacrificial platform, looking pretty corpse-like. Was her dream self dead too? There's no need for a definitive answer. But it would be reasonable to view her slumber as a state of undead-like stasis, like a vampire in a crypt.

Her resurrection demanded that her dream self be killed on the platform. And so it waited there for the entire session until Jack destroyed Derse, and was consumed by fire. This woke her up, and restored her to life for the first time in years. Her robot exploded as her soul un-disembodied itself. She then attained the god tier as the Maid of Time.

The old FS account, andrewhussie, has been discontinued, having collapsed under the weight of 1200+ unnavigable, unsearchable questions, most of which were silly and wildly "off topic". (re: there was no topic.)

I have saved all of those questions and will comb through them at some point to select the most interesting ones and display them elsewhere, in a manner that is easy to browse, an arrangement they did not enjoy in Formspring's ponderous and entirely nonexistent archival system.

I will also try to keep things more OT with this account, and address stuff that people presumably give a shit about, and try to keep the nonsensical haggling to a minimum, as well as avoid bringing to light questions of no substance. All of that was done with a spirit of amusement, though some people surely disagreed with its humorous merit. They were probably right! What do I know.

You may now ask me a question. This account is like a new Chia Pet fresh out of the box, and you have the privilege of applying the disgusting coat of mud to the orange ceramic surface, getting grossed out, and regarding your purchase with a deep sense of remorse.

You may also liken the account to a new kit of Sea Monkeys you just purchased for some baffling reason. That's fine too.

I was either not aware of the low quality setting which displayed vectors as aliased, or I didn't think it looked that great. I don't remember. I was also not even remotely aware of how much easier it would be, as well as aesthetically preferable, to just import loads of GIF graphics and animate those in Flash.

This speaks volumes about how all of HS has been approached. There I was, preparing to embark on something I knew would last at least a year, planning to do every page in an application I knew practically nothing about. Adjustments were made, as they have been the whole way through.

Launching into HS has been like partaking in an extreme wilderness survival challenge. I parachuted into the middle of the jungle with no equipment except for Picasso's stupid blank-loaded pistol. The beta was me unloading all the useless rounds into an angry tiger on the first night.

Thanks for saying that, and also about the formsprings too. And also for being grateful I don't do porn? You're welcome.

This is still by and large the type of question I get, and even most of the "troll questions" tend to be playful and harmless.

The picture I paint with some of my question selections is probably pretty different though. Why is that? A strange form of theater I guess. Probably some people think it is unsettling, but that's because it does too good a job at rendering a great pit of hostility beneath the surface. Such is the power of having complete control over the flow of information. This is the advantage the media enjoys, and which is why they can keep a lid on important and completely true conspiracies from being known.

I was kind of wondering if I went too far in any of my recent answers. Feeling mildly concerned about this, I reread everything I wrote, and I am pleased to report in the light of a new day that I have been 1000% exonerated. My FS answers remain as lucid as ever - coherent, informative, humble, and at worst, transcendentally hilarious.

And if anybody was wondering, the comparison of myself with Picasso below was in fact a strikingly successful attempt to place myself on the same level as one of the greatest and most acclaimed artists who ever lived, if not significantly higher. In no way was the comparison made simply because everyone has heard of him, to make a separate point. If that were the case, ideally I would have selected a very bad and unfamous artist to maintain a pleasing veneer of humility. This is the most important thing an artist should ever concern himself with, we all agree about that.

Well come on now I obviously agree. Unless this particular page is your first ever exposure to stuff I've said, you oughta know that.

I've copped so many times in so many different ways to the imperfection of HS and its function as something basically exploratory. Trying things out, seeing what works and what doesn't and learning from it. And also sticking up for the decisions and process that created it, imperfect though they are.

The problem is all that shit gets buried deep in Formspring and people forget, and it's not archived like a blog so it's hard to find again.

I think your point is one of improved diplomacy more than anything else. As an ambassador for my work, especially in the FS format for whatever reason, I'm pretty off the rails.

Whenever you're dealing with a serious artist, there is a decent chance you are dealing with someone who doesn't always care to be polished in diplomacy. I've heard that Picasso was kind of a dickhead. He probably didn't cut a whole lot of slack to someone who said, hey Pablo you stuck the eye in the wrong place, fuckass. He was a very important artist and had all these BIG IDEAS and the net result of it all was something great. Maybe his personal volatility was part of that package?

At the same time, someone would be perfectly justified, then and now, to say, hey Pablo, that painting looks like shit. I mean, some of his paintings really seriously did look like shit. And he would be equally justified in calling them PLBs for not "getting" it, and he probably did. He probably had his own term for those sons of bitches. He would be justified in doing so because he knew that everything he did, even the shitty stuff, was part of something bigger, even if only in his warped mind.

But that said, and everything said below, maybe this is all getting a bit distracting. That is, talking about myself and my views on my work and my views on the views of others. It is possibly getting JUST A LITTLE tedious, and maybe it's time to reel in the purpose of my Formspring exploits.

I mentioned a lot of stuff was getting buried. Maybe answering 1000+ poorly archived questions is getting into ridiculous territory. Maybe it's time to delete all the questions, clean the slate, and start new with a modified focus.

Whatever imperceptible benefit typing this is having, I'm sure as hell not DRAWING right now, that's for sure.

At this point 90% of all FS questioners are some variety of troll or another. With no exaggeration.

If someone's trolling me insincerely with some irritable sounding nonsense, I *think* I usually know when that's going on. But sometimes I'll answer as if they were being totally serious to add a fresh new layer of bullshit to this stupid dance we're all doing together here.

Her ascension to Fairy Vriska strikes me as a pretty decent distillation of who she's always been as a character. Impish, ubiquitously meddlesome, and kind of annoying.

You could say that a character's ascension to godhood is meant to be the full realization of who they are, and prepares them to function as a demigod in the universe they create. Vriska's true form is that of a pesky, murderous luck fairy, and has been the only one so far to exhibit the god-like influence made possible through realizing this potential.

So ok my snarky stuff is all fun and games until I say something you disagree with?

I'm not "pretending to be a huge tool." A lot of my responses include an edge because it is funny and entertaining and probably most people agree. I have stated this, hence there is no pretense. Would I behave that way in real life? No, because that would be sociopathic and deranged.

How dumb do you have to be to not get that? Oh I see you actually believe you are HOT ON THE TRAIL on blowing the lid off a REAL LIFE DOUCHE BAG. Quick, take a blurry photo of me before I scurry off into the woods!

But it was already clear you are not the king of perspicacity because you are in full PLB lockdown mode. When given a series of reasonable and logical remarks at odds with your perception, you become stubborn and hostile. This is because it is painful when you discover you're on the wrong side of the truth, and the response is only natural.

I imagine it is an even worse feeling to discover you're on the wrong side of not stupid.

Nah, not really. There is no getting or gotten cause it's already done.

It complemented a pretty brief, mysterious dream sequence in a way that matched the scene's symbolically cryptic nature. Dreams in works of fiction often communicate their messages in such ways. Like the strange backwards-speak in the Twin Peaks dreams.

We had ten short passages, presumably narrated by dream Serenity, calling back to this excerpt.

We don't really know what she is or isn't doing. All we know is she and WV are sharing a dream.

Dream rules have never been that easy to pin down. We only know what we know about dreams and dream selves after facts have accumulated over a long period of time. WV's dream sequence doesn't seem to fit into the existing model, and we can't expect to figure out how it fits into everything right away, if it does at all.

It does seem the sequence was more like a "normal" dream, full of symbols and foreshadowed peril. Vriska, for whatever reason, deliberately or otherwise, shared this normal dream, and was able to understand some things about its context, and the role WV is supposed to play. Perhaps her psychic acuity was a factor. Perhaps her godhood status was as well. All you can do is speculate.

We do know that she is dreaming without a dream self, and without her dream self having been killed. She is her dream self, having resurrected to reach the god tier. We didn't know anything about how such a character would dream, but here's a glimpse at some evidence.

If you converted that to a line drawing without knowledge of the lens, suddenly hopy shit that paw is huuuuuge, and way stockier and more exaggerated than could be accounted for by foreshortening. You could explain this, and there would always be someone out there who wouldn't care. They'd say, no it's huge dude. Look at it, it's huge. That paw is huge, don't even start with me.

My drawing isn't being fisheyed, but there's a similar principle in play. Perspective is accelerating in the space through which the arm extends. It's not super dramatic lensing, but its enough to offset expected foreshortening.

Combine that with the anatomical stylization of the figure, which is on the lanky-limbed side to start with, and you get what's there. Don't think it looks cool? Whatever! Looks good to me, but then, I know the vantage from which it's meant to be parsed.

It would be a shame if all art had to forfeit things like dynamism in perspective, anatomical stylization and things like that because people not familiar with these principles regard their yields as defective.

Anyway now that all that's been explained to death I guess it kind of ruins the drawing? Kind of like an overexplained joke. But maybe we learned some stuff?

The funny thing is, I think people with more knowledge on art ironically tend to be MORE permissive of certain deviations in approach, like off template anatomy or perspective, if pursued with otherwise keen fundamentals and an intelligent eye toward aesthetics. It's the people with less knowledge who pick and fuss over stuff that just isn't really the "big problem" they think it is, even though they think they're packing hella standards. They don't have the knowledge to fully contextualize what they're observing, and they can't properly articulate their reservations, so they often resort to exaggeration, and QUITE often carry a pretty sour demeanor about it!

I call this Picky Little Bitch Syndrome.

It's not just art. Every field has its PLBs. Movies, books webcomics...

And calling a PLB on being a PLB only makes them grumpier, which only further cements the diagnosis. For instance, any grumpy response to what I've said here will serve as a convenient admission to PLBhood! TIA.

Notice how the hand is also about twice as big as the other hand. Quite the mutant hand!

Or, it could just be that the arm is proceeding into the foreground, causing perspective to alter the relative dimensions. Add in a slight stylistic forcing of the perspective for a dash of dynamism, and there you go.

Understanding some things about art goes a long way in having certain questions not occur to you in the first place. Like why horns are solid orange sometimes, or why sometimes characters don't have arms.

Kind of like when I learned stuff about science, I finally stopped asking why I couldn't see atoms, even if I squinted real hard.

Just so everyone is up to speed, this is the aggregation of all the formspring memes we need to be pounding repeatedly.

Fat Mexican Vriska has nice ass, and I am presently married to this woman. I feed her a steady diet of surprise noodles, finish crumbs, and every day I must pry her monstrous carriage out of bed with a shout pole. From time to time, we seem to endure various forms of marital strife.

There is an exact way that A5 is going to wrap up, and there's a lot of dangling stuff that needs to be wrapped up before it wraps up.

A5 is just a huge, huge thing and there's no escaping that. It could be bigger than the entire Problem Sleuth adventure when all is said and done. It is the result of cracking open the ridiculous amount of potential accumulated through the first 4 acts, and cashing all those plot checks.

Jeffrey at topatoco did, as he does for the shirts and really all the products. I just sort of shrug and go along with his decisions, and he shrugs back. This is how things go between the creators and topatoco often. It's quite an elegant ballet of mutual shrugging.

But really, I think we should be clear on what a "personalization" is. It is a sketch, not a commission. A sketch is something I can do quickly, whereas a commission is not. I would love to be able to do every outlandish idea people have, and would certainly do so in smaller quantity. But when I get requests of an extremely diverse nature, often involving many characters at once, and have to do hundreds of those, that is actually somewhat mind destroying after a while. The consequence is a radical reduction in quality of the sketches.

What is better I think is to do what I am doing. Which is to draw a single character, do a better job with each sketch, in a way that allows me to satisfy many people without requiring the mental gymnastics of processing hundreds of endlessly specific ideas involving 2-20 characters at once. So it's not that the price didn't drop for a lesser service... it's that the original service was underpriced!!!

The cover to Volume 6 is an example of my more conventional illustrative style. Which is not to say the quality diminished. But that graphic took me significantly longer than it would have several years ago.

It's just not the saddle I'm used to anymore.

OTOH, I can knock out a Flash animation faster than I ever thought I'd bother being able to.

Some people scratch their heads over them and wonder what's the deal. This is not actually THE deal with them, but it demonstrates something they can accomplish.

What has happened here is a secondary, hidden joke has been told in parallel with the events taking place. Because these frames are direct mods of earlier panels conveying a similar scene but a totally different situation, the reader, if alert, remembers exactly what should come next. Hence we have an "extra" joke in addition to all the obvious points of humor. You are caused to imagine these two are about to kiss, and that is funny and absurd.

This cannot be accomplished nearly as directly without the visual callbacks. But this does not mean every time we see such a callback, there is a similar joke being cracked. It's not quite that simple or literal.

But using them frequently is important for setting them up for use in situations like this. You can't really just pull one out of a hat without establishing the tendency to do so. The callbacks have been woven into the fabric of normalcy first, to the point where they hardly raise an eyebrow anymore, while still demanding your recognition when they happen.

Having established them this way, there are other more subtle purposes they can serve as well. Not just jokes. Sometimes they illustrate contrast in situation. Like when Davesprite defended sleeping Dave, that panel was reused when future Dave stood over sleeping doomed Dave, contemplating whether to kill him. Pretty contrasting moments, and the callback invites such reflection.

Same with the Jadesprite callback. It wasn't just the joke being communicated. It also echoed the first time it was used, when Dream Jade slapped Dream John trying to wake him. Now situation is somewhat reversed. Dream Jade (Jadesprite) is being slapped by Real Jade. That character's role in the scenario has transmuted from heroic to pathetic.

None of this reads at all, or is put in the spotlight for consideration, without the callbacks.

OOPS ohhhhhhhh damn, yeah there is a sloppy little pair of conjunctions taking a shit in my sentence in that long thing I banged out at warp speed. *BEET RED* Ok you can blow the smoke off your red pen and twirl that thing back into its holster. And then the Gotcha Buckaroo climbed onto his horse with its raging case of Horse Asperger's and galloped away.

Isn't it funny how I did something dumb and yet you're the one getting owned?

Hahahahaha.

Also I don't really think I'm a master of the language. I just sort of use it. It's just that other people tend to wipe their asses with it. And they don't even do a very good job with that. Like they shuffle out of the bathroom with their pants around their ankles and the assisted living professional just shakes her head.

Wait you're one of these fakers aren't you. You didn't REALLY have a problem with this, right?

I actually seek them out. But not the fake ones. I usually know when some spotlight glutton is faking a gripe to steal an answer out of me.

A gripe of any degree of legitimacy represents a challenge. The challenge is to crystallize the truth behind the defense, which is the same as the truth behind my original actions themselves, even if no defense is really needed. When someone is virtually flawless, like myself, leagues of the curmudgeonly and the inadequate do him a great service by presenting their straw men. It is through the methodical and public evisceration of these proud ersatz fellows and the humbling of their puppeteers that his infallibility shines through.

The devil is really just a straw man presented to God through which He makes a show of His true supremacy. A foil of His own clever and surreptitious invention, because He is a Smug Piece of Shit.

And now having said that, I will put my ear to the ground and listen for the pounding hooves of the retarded cavalry.

I don't know if I agree they're all interesting though, because in order to be interesting, perhaps by definition (maybe my personal one), those characters need to be used often enough to draw out the interesting qualities.

But I do think that any character introduced, even very marginal ones, should always hold the potential to become interesting. And ideally, that potential should be evident.

2. division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups: a dichotomy between thought and action.

I was sort of implying being safe and being wrong were creeping up on mutually exclusive territory. Understanding this should accurately calibrate the amount of despair you should feel if you ever find yourself being both those things at once.

;-)

(i just made the little clicking noise with that wink, you know the one that makes winking cooler)

Not really, there are people who don't like it on principle. I know this because I have read their reservations. Not a HUGE amount, but they're out there.

The objections you mention OTOH are trivial. It is 1) unfunny and 2) self indulgent? Ok! Again I marvel at my inability to craft jokes which are universally pleasing to the global population.

Is it self indulgent? Well, here is what it is on its face. It is another vehicle through which I deliver jokes, in a body of work largely comprised of me delivering jokes. That delivery is happening, IMO, in a way that is immaculately in keeping with the original spirit of the work, though you may hold a different view. Please read further down for details.

But... IS it self indulgent?

Yes.

Such was confessed up front in the series of 4th wall interludes. Humorously.

Nah, it's fine the way it is. You say I could take a different approach because *some* people don't like something? Oh no! Who would have thought a certain quantity of people wouldn't like something! I've got to make sure that never happens, ever, I don't know what I was thinking.

So ok, 4th wall stuff.

Sometimes I catch people wrinkling their noses at the goofy 4th wall stuff. Now, I'll roll my eyes as much as the next guy at some really inappropriate 4th wall bending in places it doesn't belong. Probably the benchmark for where it feels appropriate and complements the story is something like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Who doesn't find it charming and hilarious whenever he lowers his shades and sasses us through the silver screen, while Cameron kicks his dads car into a forest to the score of "BOW BOW..... chicka-chickaaaaaaaa"? Nobody is who. But taken beyond that, in works of more serious dramatic magnitude, or just really mishandled in some types of comedy, people start groaning.

Some people are inclined to give these things more latitude. Others are more strict.

But regardless of where you are on this spectrum, I kinda have to wonder how cement headed a guy has to be not to see that if ever there was a time such antics were permissible, it would be through this particular format, and this particular story. Remember what sort of thing you're reading? Seems like I've got to remind people sometimes.

First of all, let's acknowledge that regardless of how immersed you are in whatever's going on, this is a story built almost entirely out of ridiculous gags. The preceding stories were too. PS warped the 4th wall in similar ways, and this is the tradition through which HS was conceived and delivered. It's light, it's loose, and above most other considerations, humor prevails.

But there are even more important reasons than this. The entire nature of the story/format is one of blurriness between reader, player, author and character. It began with readers issuing commands to characters, and me the author parsing them, and the character responding with action to both parties. It is at all times a fluid dialogue taking place between these story entities. And at all times the author's presence is quite palpable, even without the actual AH avatar present. The narrator's voice is pretty unapologetically my own, and I think that's clear to the alert reader. He quips with the player and the character alike. But it goes even further than this. As the story progresses, these player/character roles become even more malleable. Characters in the story actually control OTHER characters, through the exact same text command vehicle which drives the whole narrative! The whole thing is utterly saturated with such meta qualities, and picking out the single generically unpalatable author avatar as the deal breaker in all this is pretty petty, and reeking of less than comprehensive appreciation for the themes. The story is about players and characters watching and controlling players and characters watching and controlling players and characters, in screens in screens in screens. Server player monitors client player. Exile commands session player. Trolls from one session mess with those from another. People are commanded psychically, through reader input, through the reader's keyboard arrows at times, through the narrative volition of ==>, and through author mandate. People are spied on through crystal balls, fenestrated walls, Sburb windows, chat clients, future command station terminals, dreams, clouds, and finally, yes, a 4th wall through which we have access to the author, who's very presence in the story was already keenly felt REGARDLESS.

All of this considered, even if you're of the mindset of "NEVER NEVER NEVER" on 4th wall shenanigans, it's still beyond me how you couldn't see that if one and only one story/format combo was to get a free pass on this, it would be HS. Everything written above is quite honestly approaching the threshold of the unassailable.

But sticking to your guns on that stance is most definitely a safe position to take.

Safe, and also WRONG.

Safe and wrong. Wow, what a terrible combination!

I have trouble imagining how ashamed I would feel if I ever lumbered under such a grueling dichotomy.

I agree that they could be dispensed with, and yeah I'm not SUPER interested in catering to the uninvested.

But the bottom line is, no matter what, a lot of people are just going to not get some shit in a story like this. Even the invested, and at times, even the astute! They are there primarily as a courtesy, entirely skippable to the uninterested.

Karkat has not taken his old role. That part of the question honestly makes no sense to me.

But to answer the first part,

Of course.

Jack is now essentially omnipotent, still angry, and has very little to do anymore but fly around challenging worthy opponents to duels, and when he's out of those, simply kill people and destroy things.

What defined him as a character, and really any character, was his interactions with others, mixed in with some devices of limitation. Like what was expressed through his rivalry with the black queen before killing her.

What he has become is more of a force of nature villain. Like a terrible dragon that must be slain by the heroes. In such a story, you don't particularly expect much striking characterization from the dragon. And yet it remains a legitimate adversary to continue challenging the heroes and drive the story. His rise to omnipotence can be nothing other than corrosive to his former portrait as a character. And yet, he's still presumably the same guy, so those character qualities could resurface any time, if the circumstances permit.

The kids already enjoyed some very maniacal timeline plotting in the early going. In a way, it was a form of orientation to the type of insanity that would follow. We had timestamps on their computers, pinning down exactly when certain conversations took place, even though at that point all these events were relatively mundane. But then it all loosened up significantly as each began entering their session.

Timelining the troll events more strictly presents a more novel challenge. Doing so for the more recent kid events would be fairly trivial, and I doubt I'll bother.

If you believe the moments are designed to wring every drop from your emotional rag, you are mistaken, and are engaging with events on a pretty shallow level.

These are not even foreshadowed events, per se. They have been explicitly forecast. Doomed Dave WAS going to die. Aradia WAS going to explode. We knew these things, and their patent inevitability should tip you off that these deaths were not meant to trigger what you seem to be looking for.

There are many things we know in advance, and the intrigue surrounds discovering how, rather than if or what. And mixed in with this, there are many revelations not foretold as well. This seems to me to be the best way to assemble a story dealing heavily with not only time travel, but nonlinear construction.

And if you care to adjust your dials to the actual emotional frequency of what is going on in a story, maybe you should consider this. Sometimes emotion is not conducted directly to the reader by a death, through a first hand sense of shock and loss, but peripherally through the other characters' reactions to that loss! Consider a biographical film of a famous person's story who is known to die tragically. Is there no room for emotion surrounding the inevitable?

They are in the cache of concepts yet to materialize in the story. They will materialize when it is appropriate.

HS has been riddled with concepts introduced, and then buried in hibernation for extremely long periods of time. Then when they finally resurface, they seem like they've been around forever!

Like John's green package from Jade. The story played keepaway with the reader, dangling that box out there for a very long time. And now, it and its contents, the bunny, have functioned as an indispensable aspect of the plot for quite some time.

Pinning some of these key events to a concrete timestamped schedule has sort of opened a can of worms, which I deliberately springloaded into the can and fired into my own face. I guess I am inviting the challenge for myself to make all this hazy troll timetable stuff more definite?

Before I could always decide that a troll could do something or talk to someone, and there would always be a built in fudge factor dictating when it actually happened. And that worked pretty well. I built up quite a lot of events and conversational itineraries that way. But now that it's all out there, I guess it's kind of a personal challenge to see if I can make a little more sense of it (without being excruciatingly rigorous that is).

So now we have some key times on a countdown to zero, which we can place some critical events on.

Shortly after that, Terezi smells explosion, goes downstairs, discovers money transfer from Dave. Thus learns about humans. She and other trolls (notably Vriska) get a head start on messing with kids while Karkat sleeps,

Knowing this basic structure, we can fill in a lot of events around this loosely, between and after the key points. For instance, at 4:13, it seems Vriska and Tavros have not left the room yet for their confrontation. Eridan has yet to get his wand. And so on.

We also know that shortly after the expiration of the countdown, Terezi has the conversation with Dave in which she told him to wire the money back to her, 6 hours and 12 minutes ago from her vantage. This suggests she has not stayed completely linear in her interaction with Dave. (Which would make sense, considering how much time traveling he's been doing.)

We also know that Karkat is around after the countdown from one of the memo timestamps.

Always?? I didn't realize one could be so tapped into the update schedule surrounding these particular characters.

In this case though, I had actually written the whole log, and had a file saving mishap. I then had to rewrite it all from memory, which took twice as long, because it was pretty tedious, and I was somehow convinced the original log was better.

Technically, 1) happens first. Shortly after, a bit less than a minute, 2) happens. 3) happens in a nebulous stretch of time over that duration. He destroys Derse presumably in a similar manner to how he destroyed Prospit. There is some degree of time lapse involved.

But these are details. All you need to know is they all happened right around the same time.

All of these key events were mentioned/shown in [S] Past Karkat: Wake up.

Sollux macks twofold. We do not see his activity very often because it is TOO HOT FOR THE WEB.

He doesn't do much in the story because he is a supporting character. He is the guy who stuff happens to, rather than a guy who does stuff. Until further notice.

This again raises the issue of supporting characters vs. major characters. Sure he would be a stronger and more interesting character if he had the screen time to allow it. But we must imagine this SHADOW PLOT wherein he occupies this time and does interesting things, and all the existing pages and action which that must necessarily be crowded out in favor of developing him that way. Is it worth it? Maybe, if you are a huge Sollux fan. But in this dimension, that is not the role he plays in an otherwise very busy story, and that's just how it is.

I don't actually hate the animes, I just sort of shrug at them theatrically for hilarious purposes.

The animes represent a wide body of entertainment which includes some good stuff, as well as an absolutely incomprehensible amount of shit. Like anything.

Any smart guy could have concluded that's how I felt about it though, without me saying so. Drawing rigid conclusions from a pool of ambiguous, tongue in cheek remarks is foolish. Rigidity in perception is the hobgoblin of a shallow mind. This hobgoblin's visage is the portrait of inadequacy, and he casts his mischievous leer at you from the other side of the looking glass!

And thus it was the animes taught you how to be a better person. Thank them kindly.

The trolls had a long and eventful adventure. Karkat took Jack's regisword and used it to make a regisickle. We can infer that at some point they managed to duplicate and/or steal the queen's lance. The queen either kept her original copy of the lance, or stole it back, or it got sent to Alternia via the exiling process, just like the Queen did to become Snowman. At which point Snowman recovered it.

Really, imagine me sitting around thinking, I gotta come up with some means of taking the edge off all these future bloodbaths I'm planning. I know... rainbow blood!!!

The hemospectrum was just an idea that grew quite organically, something that wasn't part of the picture at all until after Hivebent was underway . It turned out to be a pretty good detail to fuel some of the dilemmas and intrigue surrounding the trolls' story, as well as just something kind of fun and unique about their race. Hivebent was in part about fleshing out the details of the race and setting them apart from humans, in a fairly traditional sci-fi world building sense. All grounded in humor of course.

I didn't intend to completely rip on it. It's a pretty entertaining site in some ways, and definitely in moderation.

One of the worst things about it is not necessarily the site, but the influence it has on the way so many people discuss entertainment. Dropping trope names starts to become a substitute for original ideas and critical thinking. This also leads to flagrant misdiagnoses of what's going on in a story as some pretty bland minds struggle to shoehorn everything they see into a defined trope.

It's like religion. Silly people forfeit original thought and substitute it for reference to excerpts in scripture. TvTropes is the holy scripture for anime nerds, and less caustically, just a bunch of young people who don't really know any better yet.

There are only two ways we know of that the dream self can serve as an extra life.

1) The corpse must be kissed by a prince or princess. (Please note, they are technically all princes/princesses of their respective moons.)

2) The player must die on their quest bed/cocoon, in which case their dream self takes over while upgrading to god tier on the battlefield.

The dream self also takes on the critical wounds sustained by the real self, but in a delayed fashion. Note how dream John began bleeding a little while after he was stabbed. These wounds are healed upon resurrection.

Presumably the dream self will eventually die from the same wounds inflicted on the real self, but after a time delay. This would suggest the player has a pretty brief time limit to complete their resurrection.

We've only seen three examples of this. John and Vriska, who both died on the quest bed/cocoon, so the time limit didn't matter.

Sollux was also resurrected after being kissed by Feferi. This means after he died, she made the trip between her world and his in QUITE A HURRY.

We've only been printing around 100 of each design when stocking shirts. More than that would require a significant setup and staff to ship out in a timely fashion, beyond what I have now which is just my friend Cindy shipping them out herself.

Next year hopefully I will be able to put things in place to satisfy demand. Having to dealing with significant demand for this stuff caught me a bit off guard, because until quite recently, it wasn't really like that. Also, what modest sales there were, Topatoco handled for me, and I never had to think about it.

Yeah but a story doesn't have to be just one thing. What's so hard to understand about that?

There have been other heavy moments. Bro died, dream Jade died, etc. Neither those moments, nor this one, nullifies the thousands of absurd jokes already littering this story, and those still to come.

This little segment was a bit of a Hivebent throwback. (If you can really "throw back" to something that happened over the summer.) Hivebent was still pretty silly, but it was darker and a bit more psychologically charged than typical HS action. This sequence taps into the Hivebent melodrama again, and steps it up a bit, since of course the story is moving forward and raising the stakes, as it should be.

And all that aside, there's still some humor present here if you take a step back. Understanding the full context, we see that some pretty silly cartoon mobsters from the future are simultaneously urging a confused boy to kiss/kill a girl. Believe it or not, that's actually a pretty humorous scenario!

But that said, I'm not going to pretend this whole thing isn't completely fucked up. Of course it is. That's the point.

And then, this became irrelevant, as his resurrection completed itself.

We don't actually know why. Often we have a reasonable amount of information to make inferences regarding things that go by silently in animations. But other times, new mysteries are presented in animations. This is not a case where we "should" know why this is happening, if only we could identify the pieces which explain it. It is unexplained phenomena.

He says funny things, the sort of things which I myself tend to say on occasion, because get this - I'm writing his lines!

But even on those finite grounds, I guess that makes him arguably some class of author-insert avatar, doesn't it? Or it would, if there weren't literally already one of those somewhere else in the story.

Here's the thing on that. Ordinarily author inserts are embarrassing glorifications of themselves. But with Dave, I had to take a little something off. Because in reality, aside from the fact that I don't wear shades, I am considerably cooler than Dave. This is a fact of the truest proportions. Consider that all of his remarkable achievements (SBaHJ) are in actuality my own, while the scope of my real life credentials eclipse his considerably (time travel notwithstanding).

Sometimes it is actually physically painful being this cool. I preemptively welcome your compassion, and monetary patronage.

While simultaneously realizing that everything I do can always be better in every single way, regrets and rear view gazing are excluded from the process deliberately. This is storytelling in hyperspace. Everything is done with the intent to make something as good as it can be, as loose as can be, and as FAST. FAST. FAST. as possible. Lamenting decisions is at odds with this approach, and would be irrational. If I allowed room for second guessing, then I'd be doing something completely different.

You can isolate any single thing from this, written or drawn, and conclude that with a little more time, some more drafting, editing and revision, it would improve. Such are the benefits that more conventional productions enjoy. They are how works of entertainment become polished. But that's not the mission here. There is virtually no editing going on here at all, at any stage, from conception, to typing, to drawing, to animating, to posting. The most written editing I'll do is tweaking a phrase or two after copy-pasting the text from the doc into the browser while updating. Drawings are never drafted or revised. It's always done in one shot. I don't storyboard the animations, and often don't really have the full scene sequence in mind until I'm nearly done. It's very fluid. It's all part of the challenge this represents to me in totality, and an aspect of its experimental nature.

Could it reach another level with a more intensive editing process (or one at all)? Of course. With enough concentrated reexamination, I'm sure the thing could be smoothed to such a seamless literary state, it could enter Earth's atmosphere without catching fire. It could certainly be more illustratively maniacal too. But editing is a time sink. Even a little is too much, because the top priority by far is speed. To bring as many ideas to coherent realization as quickly as possible. I get the most out of visuals with the least effort, and even though it doesn't look like I'm using all my artistic ability to make this, I do use my full experience as an artist to understand how best to optimize. Strong, simple shapes and silhouettes, dynamic composition, attention to color choice, minimal splashes of animation, all those things go a really long way for making striking visuals without requiring much effort.

It just occurred to me recently that I haven't even reread the whole story in more than a year. (It's too long! Who has time for that.) There was a time in the early going, when it was a couple hundred pages, I'd reread it now and then to develop a feel for how it read, and help solidify my thoughts on the new project and develop ideas for where I wanted to push it in its fledgling state. But after rolling for a while, rereads became unnecessary. I maintain all relevant story data in a part of my mind which I'm sure has adapted itself to be completely useless for any other task besides keeping track of Homestuck. (Though I will say, mingling amidst community discussion does help keep some details fresh in the mind.) The only time I go back to an earlier page is to verify a particular phrasing or such, or to check out a panel as a drawing reference. Other than that, I'm not sure if I've reread more than 10 consecutive pages in a year. That would be rear view gazing.

But having said that...

Maybe I'll give it a full reread in the near future, just for the hell of it.

We saw what happened to John's real body at the end. It's still lying there on the quest bed, bloody and dead. It is now a corpse forever. It did not combine with the dream self. The dream self is an independent entity which wakes up and walks around when the player goes to sleep, or in this case, dies on his quest bed.

When that happens, you may notice the dream self also wakes up on a corresponding quest bed on the battlefield. With a little inference, we can gather that since players have duplicate quest beds on the battlefield, that this is likely how players are normally supposed to get to the battlefield, rather than crashing into it via moon.

But it's also something we haven't seen. He was not resurrected in the same manner. Sollux was kissed by a princess, and his dream self woke up and took over as the "real" him, with no additional benefits. John died on his quest bed, which clearly leads to a much more elaborate resurrection. His dream self is taking over, but now as the fully realized Heir of Breath.

Vriska knew this would happen, and it's heavily implied she went through the same process. In fact, she practically stated it outright. We don't know the details yet.

No. The Medium is the generous ring of space surrounding Skaia, and bound by the Veil. It's where the planets orbit. As it is in between these two things, it is literally the medium, as in the space in the middle.

The Incipisphere is all of these, Skaia, Prospit, the Medium, the Veil, and Derse, stopping short of the Furthest Ring. It is in fact a bubble in the Furthest Ring.

Paradox space is even broader. It encompasses everything, including the Furthest Ring, all Incipispheres ever, and all universes.

The desynchronization of sound streaming on the timeline is one of the most terrible things about Flash and the programmers should feel ashamed of themselves. I always remedy this problem by making stuff late in the timeline happen just a little later than it's supposed to, by progressively wider margins. But hey maybe there's some better answer to this than I'm aware of.

Lol at everybody coming here to read answers about the story only to find me talking about lame Flash technical stuff.

There are plenty of answers below which reek of eloquence. Should I repeat myself every single time? Occasionally I select a question for the sole purpose of talking smack with a doofus. Because it's funny!

Recent events have revealed her to be responsible for exactly two more things than we were previously aware of.

Jade sleeping a lot.

DD killing Dave.

Let's look at the first one. We had a girl who fell asleep a lot, inexplicably. We had an evil troll who liked to put kids to sleep as her primary means of influence. HMMMMM.

With Dave's death, her involvement was actually reasonably foreshadowed. We knew Vriska was responsible for killing Dave at least once, according to Karkat, per her feud with Terezi. Now we know how. Could it have been foreshadowed MORE SO before Hivebent? Maybe... but how, and why? All we knew was DD went to Dave's place to get the journal, in the exact window of time it was on the toilet. How did he know it was there? Some mysterious "anonymous tip" I guess. Now we know the nature of that tip. I'm struggling to think of a way in which additional foreshadowing would have actually improved this event.

Other than that, her being "behind everything" was a statement made by her, an exhibit of bravado. We have no evidence regarding what else she's influenced.

Back on the serial vs archival perception issue, here's something kinda funny to put it in perspective.

In the grand scheme of things, Vriska did some stuff to the plot that got people hot and bothered, and filled hundreds of pages of forum threads with discussion about it. There was a time that happened, and many things were said and grievances were aired.

Not really. If anyone's a "Parody Sue", which is already an entry in TV tropes, it would have been Jade in the early going. But even then, I don't think I'd really call her that. I think it's a little lame to be aware of tropes while writing a story and almost use them as a palette, or a checklist. Like, ok, I'm gonna do that and that and that! I just saw her as cute, silly character with lots of answers at that point in the story with SOME traces of satire directed at "Sue types", who eventually had the rug of all her advantages pulled out from under her and now has to go through a process of discovery like the others. Not every peg needs to be crammed into some trope hole, even if it seems vaguely apropos.

Vriska, if anything, would be a further distortion of a Parody Sue, like an "Evil Parody Sue", and even then, in a kind of meta way. She lives her life as her own self-aggrandizing, wildly powerful self-insert character, always comes out on top, and never suffers consequences. She even sort of mocks her own intent on this on a meta level by "self-inserting" into the kids' story and influencing their events, as she said. And when I say "she mocks" I guess I mean "I mock". I'm usually pretty aware of a lot of tropes even though I've made nothing close to an exhaustive study of tvtropes.com, and I'm much more inclined to include tropes by warping them rather than deliberately decorating the story with a lot of straightup instances. Though obviously using them is often inevitable, since these are atomic storytelling building blocks we're talking about here.

She isn't the main villain, nor do I really see her as much of a villain at all, conventionally speaking.

She is a major character, with a series of striking strengths and weaknesses, whose every action appears to have antagonistic consequences.

Doing things which oppose the goals of the protagonists I don't think automatically makes a character a villain. It makes them part of the ensemble, which in totality creates challenges for the heroes. The other trolls also made a point of antagonizing our heroes. Could they be regarded as villains? Where do you draw the line in a story between troublemakers and real villains?

Jack Noir is a villain. That's pretty clear cut. Maybe one good way to define a main villain is whether stopping him will allow the heroes to overcome all their major obstacles. I don't think Vriska qualifies, by that definition.

That's cool, thanks. I probably am getting a lot of "WHAT'S UP WITH VRISKA????" questions. I haven't even scrolled down to look, so I'll just answer this one in a general way.

When examining The Case of Vriska Serket, it helps to zoom way out on the story for a moment. Rewind all the way back to act 4, when just a few trolls were lurking around, and behaving as little more than a nuisance.

When I was about to launch into the Hivebent arc, I thought one cool opportunity that presented was to introduce a very major character out of nowhere, who we had literally no foreknowledge of other than one shot of a strange looking horn cropped off panel. The entire profile of this character was always meant to be "someone who is in some way involved with practically everything", and the scorpio sign seemed suited to this. This aspect of her profile was conveyed up front in her introduction, and hammered repeatedly with almost every scene she's been in. Hivebent was a good introduction to the ways in which she entangles herself nefariously with everything, and slowly but surely, this has been revealed to be the case in the main plotline. It was unclear before, and indeed unclear that this was even a question that needed to be answered, because she had not been introduced yet. And personally, I think there's something kind of exciting which that proposition injects into a story.

Before Hivebent, most of the trolls were portrayed as incompetent at trolling. And when the roster was expanded, the question was begged: are any of these trolls any good at trolling? So part of her profile was also to serve as the ultimate troll. Karkat was an effective troll insofar as he was loud and angry and obnoxious, but that's about as far as it went. Vriska was designed to be a good troll in the purest sense of the word. She gets people legitimately riled up. Both in the story, and even more importantly, outside it. There is no other troll, or really even any other aspect of Homestuck, which generates more debate. This was intentional, and continues to be.

Now if over time it begins to seem she's behind more and more of the negative plot developments, she could certainly start to be regarded by some as a one trick pony, from a plot-impact standpoint. But there's a lot to consider here. First of all, very simply, sometimes a story is going to have that "evil mastermind" character, who by definition is responsible for things to an extent far beyond what first appeared. This I think is a generalized enough concept to qualify as a basic story building block to adapt in creative ways, and is not so specific as to encroach on cliche territory. The mastermind is a sort of archetype, and she's revealed to be one such instantiation, with her own style and set of motives.

Additionally, everything she's done is just logical with respect to everything we know about her. She is presented with a room full of computers tapped into the session which unleashed their nemesis on them. She has 6 hours to do whatever she wants. Given everything she's done before, the thought that she wouldn't use her time to maximize her influence on that session in every way she can imagine, and every way which suits her megalomaniacal point of view, is pretty implausible. Of course she's going to secretively wreak havoc. We are just systematically discovering how she went about it. This was an ENORMOUS question begged by the Hivebent arc, considering her relevance there. Which was, now that we know about her, what was Vriska's role in the kids' session? This is a really striking point of curiosity, especially since we had never heard a peep out of her before Hivebent. It turns out, surprise surprise, that she had more influence than even the "main troll". The difference was, while he was very loud and stormed through the front gate (backwards), she kept a low profile and was more devious. And if we somehow discovered this WASN'T the case, it would actually strike me as a pretty bizarre development with no real meaning or purpose.

And going back to the point about "zooming out of the story" for a moment, when judging these things it helps to examine the difference between reading this serially vs. archivally. These are extremely different ways to read a story, and radically affect your perception of developments. Reading all of act 5 might take a few hours, but doing so live takes months, along with which comes a lot of intense scrutiny and speculation. So while you're reading live and it turns out Vriska's responsible for more shenanigans, the reaction can easily turn into "oh here we go again with this", because you're absorbing it in slow motion. Her antics become sort of codified in the rolling serial myth of the story. Whereas reading in one shot, I think all this comes across as more of a reasonably paced revelation of exactly what's going on, in a way that makes sense and ties stuff together. If you just read the story starting today, you didn't even know who Vriska was until a few hours ago!

In act 4, there was a lot of intrigue built up. And a secret question could have been asked. What if there was an unseen mastermind behind a lot of this? How did that happen, and why? And what if we find out all the answers in the next act, in ways we were never imagining? If you were to entertain such questions at the time, I think it makes for an exciting revelatory process. We are in the thick of that process now, albeit in slow motion.

And this doesn't mean we should take her at her word when she says she's behind "everything". That's obviously how she would view it of course. But to take that literally would be to underestimate the complexity of what's going on. There's a lot happening, and really she's just another cog, even if it's a major one.

She gets a lot of screen time because she's a major character now, and as I said, that was in fact built into her profile before I even drew her. If you're wondering why we camp on her when there are so many other nice trolls to dwell on, well, sorry. There are major characters, and there are minor ones. If you're waiting for me to fire up NEPETAQUEST 2011, don't hold your breath.

Also it is safe to say who cares about black holes and physics, since time and space work differently out there. What is gravitation other than the influence it has on time and space? From an Einsteinian perspective (aka the right one) NOT MUCH AT ALL.

Also it's a cartoon in which a shitty wizard figurine turned a knitting needle into a superpowered wand.

It's implied he and Rose have discussed some of these topics before. Both of these characters have sort of "gotten away from us", as far as their visible narrative goes. Whereas with John and Jade, we have kept a pretty close eye on everything they have been up to since they were introduced.

Between Dave entering his gate and when he went to sleep in the gold ruins, there is much unaccounted for. Same with Rose after destroying her gate. It only gets more out of hand for Dave when he time travels more, i.e. becomes future Dave with the red sleeves. He's obviously been through a lot, and there's no way we'll ever grasp the totality of his experience. It's safe to say he knows a lot more than black suit Dave, but unless something's explicitly stated in the story, we can only guess.

Sharing his blood is not by itself a way to win his favor, because of course he hates himself.

He bonded over it with Jack because he liked Jack better than the kids, who he saw as the source of all his misfortune. He thinks Jack is a cool badass who goes around stabbing people (i.e. Karkat mostly). He became like a father figure to him, and mistreats him just as a true Alternian father figure should.

I don't know. I should point out though, if you weren't a new reader, it wouldn't occur to you to ask this. It is just a fact of the universe. I invite you to begin taking it for granted. It's a wonderful feeling. Maybe the best feeling you will ever have.

User input is extremely sparse these days. Troll names were the last instance. And they were the first instance in a long stretch of time before that.

At one point, probably well over a year ago, I thought about using polls to determine some major plot developments. Like what Dave or Jade would prototype with. That vague idea was one reason I littered a lot of weird things around their houses (remember Dave's collection of dead shit???), not only as red herring material, but to leave it open to this democratic solution if I felt like going that way.

I didn't though. It seemed like too much trouble, and such plot developments have a way of pushing themselves off into the distance. By the time they come around, it's just more natural to have already planned what should happen and act accordingly. The reward for that sort of gimmick is very limited.

At one point I even considered making a fake poll for Jade's prototyping. It would have looked real, but I would have ignored the result and done what I did. But even that would have been too much trouble for little reward. It might have been kinda funny, but ultimately.......................................

Looks like it was just them. Aradia dug it up, and Sollux hacked it together with his codes. Doesn't seem like they shared it with anyone outside the group.

Probably better that way. Trolls are a nasty race. If there were thousands or millions of players, probably most of them would have been successful. That is a lot of universes created and run by evil aliens.

Humans by and large are wimps, so the vast majority of the other players failed, if not all. (This was hinted at by lack of solid documentation on gamefaqs, other than Rose's. ) In that sense, the global proliferation of the game was logical, to improve odds of some group being successful. This is how procreation works most of the time. Safety in numbers.

Not having a song available is never the reason for not doing a flash. There are always many on hand.

I'd prefer to be careful about pushing the drama pedal too hard. The dramatics are still ebbing somewhat after Jade: Enter. Not every major development needs to be delivered that way. Static panels have often portrayed significant developments. Sometimes they do so more effectively in some ways. For one thing, they allow the written narrative to come along, jokes and all, whereas flashes are necessarily mute presentations.

Exactly. That's why the timeline in which she killed John was not the alpha timeline. Because it resulted in such a paradox. As such, everyone from that timeline was doomed. (Davesprite, future-dream Rose)

However, paradoxically, those same doomed people from that timeline were critical to the events of the alpha timeline. The alpha timeline, and Bec Noir, could not have existed without that doomed timeline. In fact, the kids wouldn't have even been "born" without it.

But that's not possible, because it would have given away Karkat's blood color.

So trolls all have boring gray eyes. While we have our boring red blood. Trolls get fancy variable blood colors. We get fancy variable eye colors. Each appears to be inclined to type with their fancy eye/blood color.

Let's not get carried away with the Anti-Sepulchritude thing. That is not literally what it is.

Often, ideas are drawn from other ideas without requiring an explicit, canonical link drawn between them.

He has a sword, wings, is driven by a dreadful green energy, and is evil. The character transforming in question is Jack Noir, whose alter ego is Spades Slick, who was the non-canonical evil counterpart to Problem Sleuth. That's all there is to this.

I don't recall to what extent Bec influenced the concept of a lusus. I'm pretty sure there wasn't the direct line of inspiration you might expect. But I am sure that as it was conceptualized, the similarity between the way trolls are raised and the way Jade was raised definitely occurred to me. This is something that has been touched upon a number of times. One of the many culture clashes in dialogue that have been made possible by learning about the trolls' world in detail.

He was always meant to be a "chess guy", and that probably had more to do with his king hating than being a mayor. His interest in democracy was similarly rooted in this character trait, so it's probably more correct to say the mayor command was adapted to those circumstances, and then elaborated on. Included in this elaboration was the civic roles for all the exiles, leading to the nature of their back stories in the medium.

I probably shouldn't have been so rude to a child. Children (people under 25) are very naive and often take things too seriously. You would think I'd have learned my lesson, but here I am sassing up youngsters all over again.

The current continuity is always compatible with the older continuities. But sometimes certain systems and patterns are suppressed or ignored for long stretches of time, for whatever reason. Usually to place the focus on other things. It stays that way until those old patterns are revisited. Like when it turned out that some of the trolls seemed to be responsible for the very early failed name entries for the kids.

He didn't do anything. The transformation was automatic, as it was the first time it happened.

When I said "He ditched [them]," I wasn't being literal about a decision he was making. Spoken more technically, I meant "his body ditched them in a natural response to the mutation he was undergoing."

We've all seen powerful dudes evolve into different forms a thousand times. They aren't making choices about their transformations. Come on, we all know how this works.

The entry items for the trolls is one of those topics that was left to the imagination, and it's likely this will always remain the case.

Entry items as a whole were never supposed to be THAT significant as a game detail, but in looking back on the four items we've seen, there's a lot to talk about.

Each one is symbolic in some sense of a departure. And each has things in common with some of the others.

John's is the simplest, and rooted in the most obvious myth, which is taking a bite of an apple from the tree of knowledge. It makes sense for a number of reasons. It represents the most significant departure since it kicks off the whole game. It's also very easy to "solve". There's no puzzle element to it. They get progressively more complicated.

Rose had to break a wine bottle on her house, just as ships are christened. And though not seemingly a part of the challenge at first, the trial involved losing the bottle and having to take a leap of faith to retrieve it, and well as rely on a friend (Jaspersprite) to help her complete the trial. This was required of Jade as well.

Dave had to wait for an egg to hatch. The symbolism of the egg, like the apple, is pretty obvious. The challenge here was to do nothing, to have patience for several hours and wait for it to hatch. And though it seems like a simple challenge, it proved difficult for Dave, and would be a significant trial for one who was to become the Knight of Time.

Jade had to destroy a Bec piñata. There's plenty that could be said about piñatas. You could even be as superficial as noting they're used during birthday parties, and opened to celebrate birth. But I think it's more interesting to study it from the vantage of the symbolism surrounding the destruction of effigies, and the implications this has for the Bec prototyping and Jack assuming his powers. Her challenge was to destroy it while blindfolded, and only by shooting it in the head. Several previous chat references had been made to this outcome, which was similarly foreshadowed by their strife dance together. The symbolism of killing her dangerous dog to enter (i.e. a step toward growing up) borrows notes from the Old Yeller story, but in this case, it's a dog that can't die (though nevertheless would assume a death-like state through prototyping). Also included in her challenge was taking a shot in the dark (much like Rose's leap of faith) and relying on her friend who redirected the bullet through his own head, the very friend she was attempting to slay in effigy.

This is easily the most complicated of the entry puzzles, very thick with symbolic meaning, and is probably my favorite part of this animation.

Also note all of the items are, in a way, edible. The boys have directly edible objects, apple and egg. The girls have objects which contain edible goods; the bottle and piñata contain wine and candy, and both needed to be broken. Dave's was actually a little of both, a food product, and a container for that product which needed to be broken (i.e. hatched). John and Jade's items both came suspended from a tree. Each item had significance to the player, if loosely. Jade's was obviously quite personal. Rose's related to her mother's drinking. Dave had been plagued by crows. John's is the only one which seemed generic, although there was a tree outside his window which seemed to be a fixture of his life. His wasn't especially personal since it was the simplest trial, and something most generically befitting of entry and mythological departure.

Each trial can be summarized more simply:

John: Loss of innocence.
Rose: Leap of faith, trust in a friend.
Dave: A lesson in patience.
Jade: Shot in the dark, killing a friend for its own good, and greater good.

Even though we saw the result, I think there's still some element of mystery left as to why he prototyped himself.

Could he have diverted/destroyed the meteor without doing so? Probably.

The word "omnipotent" has been thrown around, but we don't know how literal this is or what the extent of his powers was. He could do some crazy things pre-prototyping, sure. But could he fire a huge green laser? We have no idea. It looked like his powers were passive, for the most part. Teleporting anywhere, and being able to teleport anything anywhere. It's reasonable to think he could have redirected it into the sun or such. Maybe he had a good reason for not doing this, and blowing it up instead?

I didn't forget. He's sort of a special case, being the first guardian and all. When Aradia prototyped with the frog head, it also had a tail. I guess frogs are a special case too.

Usually I'm pretty religious with rules I set up. But occasionally judgments are made to bend the rules slightly in not especially plot significant ways, for stylistic considerations or whatever else. The only real problem with doing this is I'm left open to the ASPERGERS GOTCHA TRAP.

1. We still don't know what the scratch does, other than being characterized generically as a rift in space-time, and the thing that causes the demon (Jack) to enter the troll session.

2. The scratch was not caused by the prototyping. There are many facts which make this clear. In the future, John is wearing his blue outfit while talking to Karkat for the first time. This is just before the scratch, as indicated on the Trollian timeline.

We know that the kids have around 24 hours between this future moment, and the start of the reckoning. Jade's entry was not too long after the start of the reckoning, perhaps several hours. It could be in the neighborhood of 20 hours after Jade's entry when the scratch happens. Until then, it appears Bec Noir will be skulking around the kids' session, until the scratch happens, which somehow unleashes him into the troll session.

No word of God here. This is all in the story.

What we saw in the animation was Jack fighting with bro and co, getting prototyped, and then a flash-forward to him entering the troll session. It was not a literal sequence of events.

She describes a demon, but never says anything directly connecting him to Lord English. Only offhand references to make you think that's who she's talking about. Such as calling the rift a "scratch", which brought the demon into the session, where Scratch is the name of the guy who's job it is to pave the way for LE. Sure seemed like she was talking about LE, didn't it? That was intended.

The truth is, there's no evidence at all to suggest the trolls have ever even heard of LE. Aside from Scratch making reference to his "employer" when talking to Vriska. Didn't sound like she cared though.

I think we have enough context for you to be able to answer the question yourself.

We know the black kingdom opposes the game objective, which is to create a universe. They are the opposing force to creation, and perhaps more generally speaking, existence. As features of a game, they are "programmed" to be that way. This should tell you a lot about Jack's basic nature, or any Derse agent. He was born to be a psychopath.

Although Jack appears to be a special case, seeming to be the most foul tempered agent, probably more so than either the king or queen. He also has problems with authority in every session. This appears to be part of his programming, causing him to be the agitating influence in a session. If something goes wrong in any given session, there's a good chance he's what went wrong, and maybe this is by design.

This animation (Jade:Enter.) certainly had some twists, but at the same time had some reasonably predicable outcomes.

On the Bec prototyping: people have been theorizing about this for months. It was a popular theory for a long time, and one that picked up steam as evidence gathered for it. From a certain perspective, it was "obvious", and will especially seem so in retrospect, through rereading.

But sometimes the most obvious thing is also going to be the most awesome thing, and there's just no way around that. And sometimes, ironically, the obvious thing happening can seem a bit shocking because of its obviousness.

This outcome was planned for a good while, maybe for about a year actually. And since then, I've laid the groundwork of clues and story logic that points to it. But after a while, it became clear that it would be a very guessable scenario in terms of what could happen purely from the standpoint of stakes-raising. So as I got closer to the reveal, I dropped a lot of goofy red herrings and engaged in silly forms of misdirection, to the point where it became sort of a gag unto itself. So while many may have theorized this outcome, by the time we were on its precipice, we were up to our necks in so much bullshit, I don't think anyone could be 100% confident about it, even if they still maintained the hunch.

The fact that Jack was the demon in the troll session was another "managed guessable". Lord English served as the red herring villain in that session to deter speculation to this effect. English was described as an indestructible demon. The trolls also described their adversary this way (though note, this is a perfectly understandable way to describe Jack in this form, especially since they didn't yet realize it was Jack). The obvious conclusion was that the trolls were dealing with English, and this is what most people guessed. In fact, this appears to have been sold so well, that some people have taken Bec Noir's entry into the troll session as proof positive that Jack = English!

Which is not to say that he definitely isn't. But there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in this flash which constitutes proof that Jack is English. Lord English is an indestructible demon (who also wears a very large coat many sizes too big for Jack). Jack is also an indestructible demon. Nothing yet confirms they are the same demon.

There are clues that point to Bec Noir as the trolls' adversary as well. In Alterniabound (Karkat: Wake up.) Karkat has a hunch he knows who the demon is, but doesn't want to jump to conclusions yet. He'd just seen the demon in a dream, which we just saw in the Flash. There he notices the resemblance to Jack Noir, which he hadn't noticed in the first encounter. Karkat tells Terezi that if he's right, they both get to tell each other "I told you so." What he means by that is, Terezi gets to say she was right all along about Jack being bad news. Karkat gets to say he was right about it being a bad idea to exile Jack (because at the time, it's quite understandable for Karkat to presume it was the same Jack he met, rather than one from a different session.)

There were a few people out there who theorized both these things in tandem (Bec prototyping, Jack = demon). But that's what happens when you leave clues lying around. Someone out there will guess right. But if you don't leave the clues, developments have no plot foundation. The solution is to misdirect as well as you can, in a way that's entertaining. Red herrings abound.

If you go back and reread everything, especially parts of the troll arc, and the troll/kid logs, you see tons of clues pointing to all this, and very careful language about the demon, what the kids did wrong, etc, to conceal what would eventually happen, while not contradicting it. But in totality, it all added up to this.

He ditched the fancy hat and cat cheek tufts for practicality reasons. He wouldn't look much like Bec with his pointy ears shoved under the hat, and the much bigger dog cheeks just replaced the cat cheeks. The mutation is a bit of an overhaul, arguably due to the prototyping subject factoring in as an overwhelming influence.

Since it was a design overhaul anyway, I ditched the tentacles, probably mainly because they're a pain to draw all the time. He's a little sleeker this way. And regardless, he could probably "conjure" them again if he wanted, being omnipotent and all. This spectacle likely involves green pyrotechnics, and heavy masking effects.

I think all the best movies I've seen too many times. Like Back to the Future. It's like watching wallpaper now. Nothing registers. So they don't really spring to mind as BEST MOVIE EVERSSSS.

The last two movies I saw in a theater were Scott Pilgrim, and before that, Inception. Both were good. I wish I could say great, because I really wanted them to be great. But weirdly, they both suffered from the same problem. I thought they both tried to jam too much stuff into too little time. Especially Inception. Like, times a thousand.

Inception was perpetually educating you on the premise. It was literally doing this until it ended. It's too bad, because it was full of fantastic concepts. Would have made a good TV show, to spread all that out and give it the exploration it needed. Only if done well though. Like the new show Walking Dead, which is taking a very cinematic concept, and spreading it into a series so it can take its time with everything, and I think it's great so far.

I love convoluted ideas, but they need the space to be sold properly. This is why HS is almost 3000 pages right now. But especially for movies I think, that breathing room is essential. You need to spend time with the characters and feel who they are. I remember NOTHING about the characters from Inception, except that I guess Leo Dicaprio was soldiering around in another film with a big cross on his back, and bags under his eyes. The dude sure is sportin' some anguish these days! His plight was mostly invisible to me, because I was focused on solving The Premise Riddle, and also maybe it just wasn't all that strong when it came down to it. The whole haunted by the dead wife thing. There was Ellen Page who played the role of some sort of prodigy who could make buildings fold over on themselves, and then became someone you didn't give a shit about for the rest of the movie. Because there was NO TIME to. We needed the investment time. You can't pull giving a shit out of thin air.

Actually the best part of that movie was probably her whole building warping scene, with the suspenseful moment that followed where the dream crowd began catching wise to her presence, and then killed her. That's what the movie should have been, I think. Focusing more on the mind thriller aspect, playing up the Hitchcockian moments, instead of the dreadfully generic, watered down Matrix-style action scenes. When they started up with the James Bond style skis and snow mobile chase, I literally said out loud "are you serious?" The zero-threat NPC shoot-em-up action scenes were the worst part of the movie by far.

And weirdly, I thought the action scenes in Pilgrim were the best parts by far!!! That really surprised me. The fight scenes were incredibly cool, and felt very cinematically original. The rest, as I said, felt like too much all at once. Felt rushed, crammed, a taaad gimmicky, and somehow squeezed the charm out of the story that was present in the books. In the books you got to spend time with the characters, and the pace was your reading leisure. It was fun. In the movie you blistered through the plot points while silly Zelda noises crept out of the woodwork to remind us all how much we all like old video games. I know it probably sounds insane for a story about battling 7 evil X's, but I would have axed at least a couple X's to spread it out. Yeah, it's heresy, but Scott Pilgrim isn't a religion, it's a story, and a story has to be delivered effectively in the medium given.

I guess, though you wouldn't expect it, I have purist sensibilities when it comes to film. This is why I say I would so heavily slash HS, to the point of vandalization, in adapting it to film. Film needs SPACE and TIMING to be an effective experience. So I would adapt the story to accommodate the purest FILM EXPERIENCE. Please note that as HS now stands, it is accommodating what I regard as the purest INTERNET EXPERIENCE. Something of a media freeforall, heavily user-engaging and unpredictable. But I like traditional components in cinema that have already been charted thoroughly by great filmmakers. Look at the space and timing in the Coen brothers' movies. Lots of attention given to individual scenes, isolation of moment and atmosphere, examination of character. No Country for Old Men took a very off-beat story and presented it extremely well through those methods. David Lynch also did that well, though I guess his movies were just a bit too wacky for my tastes. They were still well made though. Which isn't to say you have to duplicate these filmmaking styles to be successful in my view. Nolan, who did Inception, also did The Prestige, which was fantastically executed. It did everything I was talking about the right way to deliver what Inception attempted to, a truly diabolical story (though still basically simpler). Prestige was an A+ to Inception's C.

Trollian determines it. It is like an operator, directing the transmission to the appropriate time. It "knows" when the conversation was supposed to take place. Neither the kids nor the trolls have control over this.

It may seem like it updates a lot, and it does. But there's a difference between high content output and rapid story progression. Content output can consist of fleshing out details, silly gags, and characters shooting the breeze, which while advancing them as characters, doesn't always do a whole lot to advance the plot.

Story progression tends to involve the most dirty work. It involves various conceptual upheavals, lots of new drawing, and care put into selling those developments dramatically, or in whatever other ways are important. Practically speaking, stuff can get bottlenecked behind those developments while we wait for the creator (me) to be ready to present them. The most obvious manifestation of this is with Flash animations. I can't do them at the drop of a hat (well, not always). Things get a little spread out while I prepare for such events, and some of that preparation is just psychological. There are stretches where I'd rather just relax and draw "normal" pages, and I use those periods to set the stage for more major impending developments, arranging the pieces and often accumulating new details as a side effect. There is a very practical ebb and flow to all this, and the consequence is a story that probably seems more drawn out than it needs to be at times.

But that's fine, because part of the point is to make something that is fun to read, given any local slice of it you sample. The meandering journey was part of its makeup from the start, by design. As a vehicle of compelling story delivery, by no means was this ever supposed to be an efficient, well oiled machine.

A bunch of different things I'm sure. I do remember being on a kick where I wanted to make games, and thought it would be SO COOL to make like THE RADDEST RPG EVER, and by raddest ever I probably envisioned something slightly more advanced than Final Fantasy III.

What I do now is obviously so much better than that dumb dream.

Past me was so dumb. The only guy dumber than past me was even paster me. What a collossal idiot THAT guy was.

I don't think HS would work well as a novel. All the dialogue occurs through chatlogs, and something about printing chatlogs amidst novel prose doesn't sit that well with me. Maybe it could work, but offhand it sounds a little gimmicky. In its present form, I think it can get away without being regarded as gimmicky, and more of a media exploration, simply because its format is so hard to pin down. The exploration itself is inseparable from the format.

As I've said, I do think it could make a pretty good movie though, if heavily revised. But the ideal format for translation would obviously be a game. Obvious to me, that is. And maybe now you as well.

Why do people apologize if a question has already been asked? Like I am going to be SO PISSED OFF.

I don't have a favorite film.

To be honest, I think "favorite things" are kind of dumb. They're sort of for little kids when you think about it, like a favorite color, or flavor of ice cream. Grown ups don't give a shit about that nonsense.

Exceptions can be made for when the thing is so much vastly superior to everything else, comparisons are laughable. Like MSPA > all websites on the internet.

It is an exploration of those things, like post death consciousness (or more commonly, the afterlife), but a lesser exploration. Elements serving as more of a backdrop for characterization, things the kids have to think about and deal with.

Dream selves in Homestuck are sort of a lot of things at once. It embodies some degree of awakening myth. A "truer" self to get in touch with and realize by overcoming something. It is also in a way the afterlife, if the correct measures are taken. It also provides a deeper and more mystical mechanism for the classic extra life in a video game. It is a means for a player to glimpse greater purpose and destiny, as well as the future. And it is even more things than this, which have not yet been developed or revealed.

Other post-death themes are explored but mean different things in different cases. The sprites have more to do with resurrection than a study of afterlife issues. It's application here centers around providing players with guides, elders before them who are wiser, or in various ways more knowledgeable. In a classic sense, a grandmother has such wisdom. Less conventionally, a battle hardened future self does as well. A loyal, long dead cat may as well, in the tradition of an animal totem. Death is what separates an elder from an ancestor. Extrapolating, the game provides a means for its players to tap ancestral wisdom for guidance. And though this may be the intent, obviously it can be exploited in a wide variety of ways.

Resurrection as a theme on the microscopic level is in play with the sprites. Macroscopically, it's invoked through the reseeding a dead civilization from the dust, as the exiles are charged with. And in a sense, with the creation of a new universe as well, wherein the players are able to resurrect their extinct race.

There are a lot of nice if not obsequious questions I get which you don't see that often because it's usually just me going THHHAAAAAAAAAAAANKS repeatedly, which isn't all that interesting for you to read.

I always thought one of the stupidest scenes in that was when John Malkovich made the little model of the junkyard to describe his plans to the other felons. Why was that necessary? It was stupid, and the plan was stupid.

Also why was Chief O'Brien from Star Trek such an asshole? What was even his problem? What was up with that.

Also sometimes I forget that A) Steve Buscemi and B) Dave Chappelle were in that, and it makes the movie worse whenever I remember.

But it's one of those movies that I always watch hypnotically whenever it comes on tv. There are a bunch of really terrible movies that are like that, defying explanation. Twister was always like that, and this could easily have been a film on John's wall. Also, and this is a source of deep personal shame, Jerry Maguire is like that too. I really can't explain this, because it is literally one of the worst films of all time. I think it might be that Tom Cruise is weirdly hypnotizing through his aggressive intensity.

Note these are all movies from the 90s because I completely checked out of popular culture in the early 2000's.

The thing is, if you make up a whole lot of nonsense, you have to make up names for everything. Portmanteaus are one route I take, like echeladder, sylladex, kernelsprite, kismesis, incipisphere, etc. Some are a really obvious slamming together of two recognizable words, some are a little more obscure, jumbling together simpler morphemes, or more basic roots of language. And when you think about it, there aren't really many other ways to come up with names for stuff than combining the atomic elements of language.

Another route to take which is more straightforward is just using a simple existing word to name a concept, and I do that pretty often too. Grist, denizens, underlings, consorts, the veil, the furthest ring, and the names of all the planets, which are about as simple as it gets.

Alternatively, you can just make up your own nonsense words, which is an idea that's a little unpalatable to me for this project. I think that's a bit of a slippery slope to full blown fictional language building, which to me seems anchored to a much more severe kind of universe building endeavor than I wish to engage in.

The closest things to nonsense words might be names like Skaia, Derse, and Prospit, but even those are more like veiled portmanteaus. Skaia pretty obviously is sky+gaia, Derse you could view as an amalgam of dearth (scarcity) and terse (curt, abrupt, a word that could characterize someone like Jack), and Prospit is obviously prosperity and whatever myriad of words the suffix "it" might invoke. Perhaps esprit, which is a word in the mix of the matesprit portmanteau. So really this is just another way of saying that things in fiction that sound like nonsense are often portmanteaus in disguise.

Troll names also sound like nonsense, but A) they were reader suggested and B) most of them have roots in other languages, usually pertaining to astrology. Of course since I was the one who selected the suggestions, my aversion to pure nonsense for this project had something to do with this outcome.

I'm not sure that either qualifies. The whole leitmotif thing got pretty blurry after a while, the more songs I piled on. At this point I just go for cool music that I happen to develop a particular idea for without thinking about cementing any leitmotifs, like I once may have intended. But often you'll hear familiar themes in these pieces anyway.

HS is getting old enough by now that the exact genesis of particular ideas is becoming hard to remember.

But here it was likely a progression by asking a series of logical questions, surrounding a key initial idea.

The idea being "punch card alchemy." Then I say, ok go, make that work.

If each item is represented by a uniquely punched card, then combining them means combining the cards in some way. Overlapping and double punching is a simple enough conclusion.

But then, what do you do with the cards?

Put them in a machine.

What machine? What does that machine do?

It... makes something.

Makes what?

How about a totem? Also uniquely representing an item.

What do you do with the totem?

Put it on another machine that reads it somehow, and creates the item.

All of this is both arrived at, and united by the themes I wanted to use to tie it together, which was various types of wood shop devices like lathes and miters, and other types of technology like old IBM card punchers, more modern laser scanners, and internet security gateways like captcha systems. And to have it all function as this sort of itemsmithing equivalent to something vaguely reminiscent of Platonic idealism. It was always meant to convey a truly esoteric forge, something a little otherworldly and in a way kind of sterile in aesthetic, like they were these odd modules of creative potential dropped from heaven. Or something.

But the story's focus on that seems like a long time ago now, and since exploring that in depth and playing with it, we've moved on to a lot of other fun ideas and plot points, while those themes fell in the background, to be revisited very occasionally. Mostly now the whole system serves as something the reader understands already, and items are manufactured without illustration or mention of the process. And sometimes, without mention of even the manufacturing. Increasingly, items just show up in the story without fanfare. That type of granularity is no longer sensible at this stage. We have bigger fish to fry.

There's a lot of evidence that while all the quadrants are regarded as important, there's more emphasis and emotion surrounding the concupiscent one (those related to reproduction, as our concept of romance is), whereas the pale quadrants seem to be regarded as "the boring ones". Which is obviously a relatable set of circumstances for humans, even if the vernacular and cultural implications are different. So if they're talking about this stuff in a heated way, it's most likely about hearts/spades rather than clubs/diamonds.

And on a side note, while we can certainly examine this stuff in a serious way as if engaging in a fictional sociological study, I feel it's important not to lose sight of the fact that this material is always meant to be rooted in humor. That's one of the big reason it exists in the first place, to set the stage for these ridiculous situations and absurd relationship dynamics and conflicts, with silly terms being thrown around leading to confusion. Much like a romantic comedy uses romantic tension we all understand to create ridiculous scenarios. This uses scifi romance principles to do the same. It's essentially a scifi romcom, but unlike a romcom which will usually at some point, if not frequently, place the romance ahead of the comedy for a sappy payoff, that's not what's going on here. I'd rather that humor always be in the forefront for HS. The details of troll romance, and all romance issues really, aren't meant to be taken all that seriously. It's all supposed to be pretty silly stuff. Romance is a foil for humor, to some extent character development, and little else.

That's probably true, but I don't think I'm that analytical when I create, i.e. write or draw. When I start working, I dive right in without thinking much, and don't stop til I'm done. I work pretty fast because of this.

The end result is something complex through gradual accumulation, in a way that I try to make maniacally self consistent. But it's all built upon ideas that I spent a good deal of time thinking about and connecting before executing. Not moments before drawing, but in the days, weeks or months preceding, while I'm doing other things like walking around and running errands. Since all the key ideas already exist on sort of a road map in my head, executing becomes a pretty simple exercise, and allows for a lot of whimsy and snap decisions, as long as those decisions aren't in violation of the big picture.

Suffice to say, there isn't a lot of analysis that goes into the process. But the result is something that can be analyzed quite extensively.

The Midnight Crew was not a canonical element of Problem Sleuth. It started in a series of donation commands, and I thought it would be fun to elaborate on them in this story. This began with their appearance on the MSPA website in the HS universe, which John and co. could read on their computers. The original rationale was that this is what MSPA looked like in an alternate universe, because I considered doing a Midnight Crew story for MSPA after PS ended, instead of HS.

Then this idea was further elaborated on when the MC was revealed to literally exist in a different universe, the one which the trolls lived in, and was the predecessor to our universe. In the HS universe, MSPA is a window to the story of the Midnight Crew taking place in the troll universe. In the troll universe, MSPA is the window to the Homestuck story taking place in the human universe. (though technically, they are windows to somewhat bastardized versions of those stories)

This idea was developed in tandem with casting Jack and the agents as key villains, and constants between sessions, in the same sense that Bowser is the same villain throughout the various Mario games, though he experiences a different fate depending on which game you play or how you play it.

I never liked the idea of including canonical Problem Sleuth characters (aside from Snoop Dogg) in Homestuck. And the more popular appeal the idea seemed to have and the more people asked me about it or theorized about it, the less I liked it for some reason. At this point it's safe to say it just isn't going to happen.

For the most part this is true. But movie clips are very touchy organisms, and I'm not completely convinced pause/playing some animations at certain frames won't mess up the timing. I'm standing by my "watch til it ends" recommendation.

It's hard to underscore enough how ridiculous I and most creators I've talked to find this notion that being high is the wellspring from which all bizarre, absurd, or otherwise creative material must necessarily come from. For the most part, there's a very significant difference between quality work and pot addled horseshit.

It's not that I think all drugs are JUST SO TERRIBLE on principle. But including them as a staple to the creative process is usually a serious detriment to the work in my view.

But in looking at your question again, maybe you didn't hold this view anyway. Nonetheless, it's a topic that rears its head now and then.

I've thought about some kind of nav system, but all things considered I'm fine with the simplicity of "open and watch til it ends".

For one thing, a lot of the animations involve Flash "movie clips" all bundled together which makes implementing pausing a huge pain in the ass. I wouldn't stop using these either. It helps speed of production.

Think of it like going to a movie. You go into it knowing you have no control over the flow of entertainment. In fact, it never even occurs to you. And everyone has always been fine with this.

I'm also cool with the fact that Flash doesn't play on a lot of portable devices. Seems to me it's preferable that people park themselves in front of a proper display before watching these things.

What isn't there to understand? Unless you're not following the story.

Jade was asleep. Her dream self is dead, so she can no longer dream on Prospit. This is what she dreams instead. She dreams of the gods in the furthest ring, and meets Feferi there, who is simultaneously napping on the horn pile. She did so deliberately to encounter the gods and prove to everyone they were harmless, after her dream self was killed with the destruction of Derse in the troll session.

Dave was also asleep. But his dream self is still alive, on the moon of Derse. He earlier had told Rose he'd take off his shades and look into the sky to observe the gods. He presumably caught a glimpse of Jade's dream, or at least the gods in general.

Why Squiddles? I don't really understand the question, but I'll state the obvious. Squiddles I guess are a sort of candy coated representation of the outer gods. Not literally. They are a brand in a fictional universe. A cartoon show. They were not necessarily conjured into existence by the gods, via dark conspiracy either. It's more likely that humans created them as an echo of their subconscious awareness that these gods exist, and present them through this cute, approachable facade.

As for the song, it it's the other way around. This animation likely would not have ever been made if the song hadn't existed for some time already.

There's Arthurian legend, but it's also getting mixed in with the blatant lord of the Rings stuff, with the broken sword slashing magic rings off the hands of evil overlords, magic volcanoes, quests to protect the ring, the great big blazing sun reminiscent of the Eye of Sauron which has become a symbolic refrain itself, and even Dave's name: Strider. But of course, I'm sure Tolkien's stuff had its share of Arthurian influence in there as well. It's hard to escape those archetypes when you're dealing with that material. Hell, maybe it was even part of the whole point for him. I don't actually know that much about LotR.

Now, does all this MEAN something?

I don't have very lofty purposes for it. It's fun to connect an elaborate fantasy tale, especially one as whimsical as this, with points of mythology entrenched in modern culture and universally recognized. These are symbols we all recognize, and in this case sort of stand in for the grandeur of a multi-threaded quest which will not necessarily ever be at the forefront of what we're shown, or what the story treats as most important.

You might notice as you read that quest details are never all that important. There's a lot of stuff that's glossed over, conversed about casually, or even flippantly. Sometimes the characters even mock the quest details, making fun of the silly and useless puzzles they're meant to solve. That's because the quests are a backdrop to the more relevant focus of the story, which is the characters and their relationships, and the much heavier plot events that transcend the quest details. Like Noir's insurgence or Rose's commitment to game breaking. All the most important plot points have to to with the subversion of more conventional quest elements.

I could have gone with Caledbolg, another name for the Aurthurian sword, but there were a couple things -fwlch had going for it.

One, it translates as "hard break", which I thought was thematically appropriate.

Two, it's a shorter phonetic hop to Caledscratch, a name which is thematically on the money for THAT sword. In fact, that was named in advance knowing the sword that produced it would be called Caledfwlch.

And in fact, the whole legendary piece of shit gag was something I planned to do down the road, the moment Dave originally broke his cheap piece of shit sword.

It would have to be so different though as to be almost unrecognizable, other than what exists at the heart of the story. Which is about the four main characters, their relationships as internet friends, the themes involving coming of age and discovery through this fantastical game setting, and that's about it.

So much would have to be slashed, unless the thing sprawled into a monstrous trilogy, or N_logy. Most likely the casualties would include: everything about the trolls, everything about the post apocalypse exiles, vast amounts of fucking around with game mechanics, and probably even the kid/guardian relationships. It would require a complete redelivery of the concept of the game as a mechanism of creation myth.

This comes with the peril of being regarded as heresy, but I wouldn't view it that way, because like I said, it is an utter impossibility to capture what this is precisely through cinema, just as it would be through a book. But reformatting the work to fit different kinds of media I think is a challenge I'd embrace. I don't regard the exact details of the story as it is now as something all that precious. I think there are fundamentals beneath all that which are more important. I always saw HS as an exploration of young people developing relationships over the internet, which is something a lot of people reading it can relate to, and a concept sort of under-represented in fiction of all kinds. I've explored that from a lot of angles so far, at first with the kids amongst each other, delving into existing relationships, and then with the trolls, which has been an exploration of forging new ones, and in particular one of making friends out of adversaries. There's a lot more to HS than just that obviously, but if there's anything which it's been about through and through, it's modern kids relating to each other from afar, developing as people and growing up.

Working the pixel sprites into the fold obviously came on the heels of the interactive RPG page. That page served all the obvious purposes is was meant to, but as a bonus, introduced another style I can resort to now and then, even in static pages. It's in the story, the precedent is set, so there's no reason not to go with it sometimes. There will probably be a rationale any time I go with it. As an iconic style it can communicate different things than the other styles. For now, I've just resorted to it as a fresh look.

I also used it as sort of a springboard to launch the more detailed style exploration. The main thought process was, if one hyper-simplified style was just introduced, why not another one on the opposite side of the spectrum? Hence the transition from one to the other, and now back and forth and dancing in between through subsequent pages. It's sort of a study of two extremes now in the arsenal as I move forward. The older styles between them will surely be more common moving forward, but this juxtaposition is a statement meant to get you conscious of the style decisions, and the overall stylistic nature of this story.

And that nature is, slowly but surely, revealing to us that it can be anything, at any time. Its nature is to accumulate visual complexity/diversity to eventually match conceptual complexity/diversity.

I think it's better not to over-complicate the symbolism behind when a drawing style is used.

It's not that swapping styles has no meaning at all, but attributing a more serious rendering style to a sudden examination of SERIOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES or whatever seems really heavy handed to me, and doesn't interest me that much.

If you look at older pages, the more dynamic style was implemented during more dramatic moments, sure. But it was also used for some pretty casual moments. The criteria here just isn't that rigid or clear cut, and I wouldn't want it to be. There's kind of a subtle ebb and flow to when the styles get switched up having to do with my whim, which can also be viewed as the pulse of the story.

Right now, the introduction of these styles doesn't mean a whole lot, other than making the simple statement that they are now in the fold. I'd rather they come in under the radar like this than ushered in with a serious event. Like WHOA SHIT ROSE JUST DIED or something CHECK OUT HOW SERIOUS THAT IS, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THIS MORE SERIOUS DRAWING STYLE. That would brand the style too heavily as a utility meant to carry out serious business, and that's not what I want.

The "trolling the fans" thing is deceptive though. Because I disagree with them that the things they're complaining about are bad. So I am only putting more attention into elaborating on something which I thought was a cool idea in the first place, and in a way, simultaneously challenging them to change their minds on the subject. It's like a trial by fire. You have to come around and learn to appreciate the thing you took issue with before you earn your right to enjoy the rest of the story, and similarly, a challenge to me to perhaps make it work for them through the elaboration process.

I guess I just believe in sticking to your guns as a creator. It doesn't mean you completely ignore what people have to say or fail to take it under advisement, but pandering and caving into critics for fear of diminished appreciation is the wrong way to go. Staying the course with your vision doesn't mean you'll do everything right, but if included in that vision is serious, concerted exploration, you can only benefit as an artist. Adversaries to this cause should be regarded as villains.

There are two ways to do the "obstinate douche bag" thing as an artist.

One is in vehement defense of stagnation. Some artists I've encountered do this, and it's completely indefensible. It's as low as you can get, creatively speaking.

The other is in vehement defense of exploration. This is just the opposite. This is a posture everyone should strive for, and these artists are the ones people should be most inclined to offer their attention and support.

That's just how I feel about it, and I come from a zero-BS standpoint on it all. This isn't a job for me, and I'll never modify my approach to protect a bottom line. If it was just a job, I guarantee I wouldn't spend every waking hour doing it. It's kind of a strange personal mission I'm on, which I happen to make money from, and that's cool. People are welcome to come along for the ride.

It's not what it's supposed to evoke. You've made the classic blunder of mistaking your point of view for objective reality.

It's fair to say the style just doesn't sit well with you, and that's true of some other people as well. But entangled with this issue is that it's something new and unexpected projected against something much simpler, as well as against everything we're used to seeing.

There will always be those who are squeamish about sudden changes, and those people will absolutely never cop to it. They will always suggest their dissatisfaction is not because a thing is different, but because a thing is BAAAAAAAAD, and they'll have their laundry list of points to prove it, and they'll come packing hyperbole just to make sure you're TOTALLY convinced.

The bias of anti-change corrupts the critical faculty. This story is built on perpetual change and evolution. This is a drill I'm very familiar with. So I have a hard time taking detractors seriously, and as usual, put a lot more stock in my own judgment.

It gets particularly ridiculous when fielding issues about the merits of an art style from people who obviously know nothing about art. The truth behind the situation is some folks got "squicked" by the contextual delivery of a different style, and then rationalize the reaction by identifying all these problems with the art completely independent of the context in which their reaction occurred, through the lens of someone who's never given two shits about serious artistic analysis.

So maybe there are some iffy things going on with anatomy? Stylistic misfires in the features? Alright, maybe this is fair to discuss. Even though really breaking down one of these images is sort of missing the bigger point here, this is what I had to say about one drawing for the record.

-----
"Is it a clinic on human anatomy? Of course not. Sort of an absurd standard to hold it to. It is, like many drawings, a balance between accuracy and stylization. It's a slightly exaggerated "gawking pose", because of course the laptop is on the ground, and she's presumably now sitting on the ground and stooping lower to see it. It furthermore conveys body language I thought was appropriate for A) a gangly awkward teenager, and B) someone nonplussed by a ridiculous internet conversation.

There's a bit of wonkiness to the stylization mixed in with the amped realism. The edges are chewed up a little more than usual. Stray pixels and 1-pixel lines dart in and out of forms. This is not an immaculate presentation, and by design. But the anatomy is roughly accurate regardless, for what it is. The virtual spine does indeed connect with the base of the virtual skull where it should, given the posture. The face, from a semi-realistic comic stylization standpoint is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The mouth is conveyed as slightly open through minimalism."
-----

This is getting down to the artistic issues in an intelligent way, and you may agree or disagree, but like I said, this is sort of missing the bigger point. For one thing, in what has been an obvious exercise in visual/stylistic volatility all along, to hold yet another emergent style to such scrutiny or as something that doesn't belong strikes me as a little petty in the grand scheme of things, as a willful misapprehension of the nature of the work, and as just another instance of "change allergy" rearing its head. Just another missed opportunity for that omnipresent group of people who can never manage to just roll with something when it's introduced rather than gnashing their teeth about it, eventually get used to it, and then later pretend they were down with it all along.

But this isn't even what bugs me about it. You can dislike a drawing I did. I don't care about that at all.

What I find really irritating is when troglodytes from the internet chirp up and bombastically suggest their judgment is better than mine when it comes to the aesthetic direction of this thing, or really any kind of direction for that matter. It's like they managed to forget whose judgment brought the thing they presumably enjoy to where it is in the first place. I don't like it whenever I get the sense that Homestuck is a sacred cow in the mind of a reader, and if I do something "wrong", I'm kicking that cow. It doesn't belong to you. The cow is mine, and you are enjoying its milk at my discretion.

Vehement detractors will almost certainly contribute to my inclination to continue to produce what upsets them, likely more so than I initially intended, and this has been the case since the start of Homestuck. Bored by sylladex shenanigans? Get ready for a lot more fucking around. Impatient with the troll arc? Whoops, time to slow it down! Uh oh, don't like detailed drawings that much? Hmmmmmm.

If I actually manage to jettison the disgruntled parties from the readership, I consider that an added bonus. Like spiking the football after the touchdown.

Believe it or not, this was supposed to be an "easy one". It got a little out of hand with feature sprawl, as should be painfully predictable to me by now.

The primary purpose of this idea initially was to create a simple, fun format emulating RPG gameplay, particularly the sort of moments where you explore a village, talk to as many people as you can, and start piecing together clues for the game's story bit by bit. I thought it would be a good way to load up on a lot of cross-interaction between many different characters without resorting to a huge linear dump of extensive pesterlogs. And it was successful in this sense. I just thought it would be easier, involving a few character sprites, a few room tiles, a simple adaptation of Alexis's existing Flash engine, and a whole lot of writing by me (that part still turned out to be true).

But in the end I think it was worth it to go a little extra further with it and come closer to capturing a more immersive feel to playing an RPG like this. Learning about story details in this manner is something so many people are very familiar with. Anyone who's ever even casually played RPGs has spent many hours doing it. And yet it feels strikingly novel to me in this context, encountering a page like this and switching your mindset on how you're being fed information necessary to advance the story. Suddenly the burden is on you to take action and piece the full picture together yourself. It's a little like doing detective work. Which is exactly what it's like exploring a village in an RPG. The various NPCs lurking around town are always alluding to things, rarely being all that explicit. Alluding to some peril in another town which might ring a bell if you've already visited that town, or will ring a bell later when you eventually do. Or talking to a person on one side of town whose story connects with a person on the other side. It's a pretty interesting angle on storytelling, that is to say, having to account for the reader's free will over data intake, which is a complete non-issue outside of interactive media, and one we probably take for granted as a story building method because we're not really thinking of it that way when playing a game. The purpose is to explore and advance, not to be led through narrative as we're accustomed to in other formats. And yet, after fully exploring a town, the end result is similar to having read a coherent story. You proceed armed with details and references which will prepare you for later story events.

And it does seem to be a pretty effective way to paint a portrait of a situation. Even more so when you aren't mining information from flat, monologuing NPCs, but established characters having back and forth conversations. It's probably hard for me to be objective about this since I'm up to my neck in it, but after playing all the way through, I get the feeling that even someone who knew nothing about the story or the characters would have a pretty good sense for what was going on after running through it all. They're aliens, stranded on a meteor, hiding from a demon, discovering another race called humans with their computers, conversing with their past/future selves, each with allusions to a distinct backstory, many characters with clear types of preexisting relationships with each other, and so on. There's really a ton of information conveyed through this, directly and through inference, without any exposition, and all absorbed very rapidly through a universally friendly, accessible format.

Personally, I think you should go back and read the troll arc. Every last word. This story thrives on details, and virtually no detail is irrelevant. Skipping some will only erode your full comprehension and appreciation for what is happening.

Primarily because it was confusing to new readers. Many people we genuinely duped into believing this thing was playable somehow, and confused for a while before finally figuring it out. Kind of unnecessary.

I don't think it's that newfound. I gave John the Wise Guy suit, what... almost a year ago?

Playing dressup with your characters will always be one of the guilty pleasures of being a creator. But also, it's pretty in keeping with RPG games this thing draws from. Characters are always getting new sweet gear as they advance.

What's the deal with the phrase "what's the deal with"? The deal with it is what you see and read. That's how it is.

Were you expecting absolute reversion to earlier story progression rhythms? You were wrong to do so. What is it about this story, this format, or this website which would make you anticipate static, unevolving patterns? Is there criticism and disapproval buried in your question? [Yes.] That's cool. But if you've made it this far, you should now be familiar with the concept of storytelling in a state of perpetual flux. Your observation strikes me as a little obtuse.

I believe the reader is well prepared for every shift in the nature of the story's unfolding. There are primers on what to expect along the way. Very early, when we first met Dave, we began a humble exercise in non-linear pacing. Conversations he had with John and Rose, then revisited from an earlier timeframe from his perspective. Some nonlinear revisitations with Jade's story as well. It wasn't just messing around. It established that time was something to be tinkered with in this story, more intensively as we progress. The MC intermission was a primer on complicated time travel dynamics taking center stage in the story. It was a tangent, quite silly and convoluted, but very good preparation for the concepts to follow, which have dominated the story since. The troll arc was a very aggressive primer on completely off the rails nonlinear story progression, which has somewhat extended beyond it into the main story, and will continue to do so. All of these primer concepts are now firing on all cylinders at once. And the word primer is the title of a very complicated time travel movie, which I have not seen yet. I imagine watching it would serve as a decent primer for reading Homestuck.

This is what the story is. There is no "real story" I need to "get back to" as you imply.

Is nature really so utilitarian? When you look at all the crazy diversity in earth biology, can you really say that only that which is strictly necessary is what exists? Why do some birds develop such elaborate mating dances when simpler ones would suffice? Choose your own example.

There's plenty we don't know about their biology, nor will we ever. There are lots of possible explanations. Vestigial genders. An unknown role gender still plays in reproduction, noncomparable to anything on this planet. Choose your own explanation.

The real answer of course is because it makes the ensemble more fun and more relatable to us.

Hivebent definitely went at a faster clip than usual for MSPA, in both image and word output. The word count spike seems especially pronounced.

But this was a deliberate effort, and not really just for the sake of a more compressed, sweeping story.

A while ago, months before Hivebent, I had the thought that I wanted to allow words to tow more of the load in what has been mostly a visual format (MSPA as a whole I mean). The trend had already been present in HS, with increasing importance given to pesterlogs to drive the story, and I've found the consequences to be interesting, and not really expected from the onset of HS.

So Hivebent represents more of a verbal push, I guess in part as a media exploration. It's not too inaccurate to describe it as a very vividly illustrated e-novel. I understand of course this is not what 100% of all readers have a strong appetite for, and that's fine with me. Reading through HS and then hitting Hivebent is a little like suddenly encountering thicker atmosphere in flight. The rate of progress slows, it demands a little more attention, and then when you get through it, the pace picks back up. (Probably!) Overall, I'm satisfied with how it turned out, and it reads pretty much how I thought it would. It just lasted a couple months longer than I projected, because I will absolutely never be able to pin down an accurate time estimate on a story arc. I have resolved to stop trying, ever.

Text-heavy visual storytelling is something I've thought about recently beyond the scope of this arc, and I think there are some interesting possibilities to explore. Perhaps I will, but I doubt what I'd have in mind would be compatible with the MSPA format. Perhaps after HS. We'll see.

Sure it's implied at times, but you could make just as good an argument against it.

The zodiac thing is completely irrelevant. There is nothing special about the constellations, as I answered below. The people of Earth assigned the meanings to those stars. Any planet in the universe could have a similar zodiac, but with different looking constellations. Perhaps all of them do.

Maybe Earth is the "paradise planet" mentioned once or twice. Maybe they could have settled there. Are trolls really prone to settle? Maybe if they were successful, they would have conquered instead. It's all a moot point obviously.

Earth is less special as a place the trolls are destined to settle, and more special as a place where the kids were born. The kids who would go on the adventure that would be completely tangled up with the adventure the trolls just went on.

The trolls probably wouldn't answer your prayers even if they presided over us unfettered.

But they aren't literally gods. They would certainly feel like it, having made the universe and then going wherever they wanted, existing as very powerful warriors from all their battle experience and high grade gear.

There are other entities and forces in this multiverse reality that could be seen as more god-like. The many instances of Skaia, for one. Whatever it is, exactly. The more sinister outer gods. Omnipotent beings like English, Scratch, Snowman, Bec. The mysterious frog god briefly mentioned, "Bilious Slick". All this stuff alludes to a pretty lively scene beyond the grasp of mortals. Players of the game appear to be just more pawns in the process of perpetuating reality. They're heroes, sure. And their stories likely wind up being the most interesting in this reality. But they're still just a bunch of mortal kids.

But we do see evidence that their story elevates them to godhood in the mythology of the people who eventually populate the universe they create. The constellations in our zodiac are just arbitrary looking star clusters, but people in our history saw them as symbols of the 12 creators, and built a whole mystical framework around their story. The specifics of the story may have been lost over time, or may never have been known. It could just be that the way our universe was created is imprinted in their subconscious, and it surfaces symbolically in their stories.

This was actually my line of thinking in writing Rose's wizardfic. If you sift through that dense excerpt, you find it's about 12 evil kids who played a role in influencing every dark event in history. My intent was that this was her subconsciously echoing the creation story of her own universe.

You could also extend their influence to the personality profiles of the characters. There are a lot of similarities between the profiles of many of the trolls and the kids. Some trolls seem to share traits with more than one kid. This is to be expected to some extent, since some of the profile elements are pretty broad. But in some cases the crossover is harder to ignore, and this could be attributed to the Alternian heroes laying the psychological tracks for the heroes that arise in the universe they create. But that said, I didn't want to get too carried away with this idea, and just make the "Dave version" of the trolls, and so on. So I drew similarities at times, and exaggerated differences at others, hoping to strike a balance.

It's a real shirt. In his letter to Jade, he said he got her the blue ghost shirt for her birthday, at the same time as when he got his own green ghost shirt. So he was wearing a different shirt before that. We just didn't know what it was.

Turns out it was a spade shirt. There is not a huge amount of significance to this other than 1) he likes magic and card tricks, and all the Harry Anderson stuff in his room reminds of this, 2) it is the symbol favored by Jack Noir, the bad guy he's destined to face in this game, and 3) it is taken by Karkat as an omen that this kid he just discovered was meant to be his kismesis. Hate at first sight.

But then he switched to his ghost shirt on Jade's birthday, which was also when he resolved to change his handle from ghostyTrickster to ectoBiologist, just after Terezi trolled him for the first time and threatened to kill him.

HS was always going to be a story about an extremely elaborate creation myth. As elaborate as I could conceive. In the HS reality, Sburb/Sgrub is the means by which universes procreate. Planets and civilizations are the seeds from which one or many new universes will blossom if the players succeed, at the expense of the life on that planet.

This was always what Homestuck was about. This revelation was carefully guarded, although there are plenty of clues. It has taken 4.5 acts to understand the "what" (as well as some of the "how" along the way.) The rest of the story will be about exploring the rest of the "how", as well as determining whether the players succeed.

I've answered numerous times that the conception of HS had its roots in loosely combining the themes and feel of Earthbound, The Sims, and Spore. That was a formula concocted many months before I began the story, well before Problem Sleuth was finished. The story still strikes me as staying very close to that original vision. Only now does the Spore component seems like it makes more sense. "Sburb" was always a word that was supposed to be reminiscent of "Spore", tweaked to reference the house building element as well. Spore is about universe building, and more specifically, life form and civilization building, but from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Sburb is the reverse. The goal is to create a universe all at once after overcoming an extensive series of challenges, and as is implied, the universe fleshes itself out with galaxies and systems and planets and lifeforms, ready and waiting for entry by the victorious players. The ultimate reward is for the players to enter the universe they created and do as they see fit. They are essentially the gods of that universe, and that is what the trolls are to our universe.

The trolls were always meant to serve this purpose. Before I conceptualized them in any way at all, their primary description was "the group of players who created our universe by successfully completing Sburb, and who would interact with the kids in some way and help them understand the purpose of the game". Logically, the other group of players would have to be aliens, since they are not only from a different planet, but from an entirely different universe. This began the thought process that lead to making them trolls, and then specifically, internet trolls who would harass the kids, but ultimately support them as the group of veteran players who understood what was going on better than any of the kids. This was mainly solidified because I thought the concept of our universe being created by a bunch of cantankerous internet trolls was a funny idea.

But at the time I didn't expect to get as deep into their story as I eventually did. I figured I'd touch upon it in some limited way, and only introduce a handful of characters, and just keep trucking along with the kids. But as their story became more entangled with the kids' story, it felt more necessary to just go all the way and get into their adventure, not just to better contextualize and characterize them all, but as a sort of accelerated primer on the entire game objective itself. The story is certainly about four kids and their adventure together, but also at its heart, it is about this esoteric creation myth, and the troll arc became a good way to establish the true objective while getting a foothold of the scope and magnitude of it all. We got a different look at how another session could go, with a much different player count and personality ensemble, and all the ways that could contribute to variations in this highly flexible game, and ultimately what the point of all this is. All this diversity and flexibility in the game's unfolding presumably has a bearing on what type of universe will be created. These ideas will be explored in detail over the remainder of the story. There's a lot more to come.

The deeper I've gone into involving the trolls in the story, the more it seems to me they were never an element I could really just shrug off in favor of focusing on "the real story". The process of going through their story has had an effect in showing the nature of the game that could never have been achieved without going down that road. Without it, I'd have to resort to a more mundane expository means of revealing the game's purpose. The Felt intermission, which certainly seemed tangential (and surely was) still served an important purpose by helping us invest in the villainous nature of Jack Noir. Without that, his future actions would have much less meaning. Similarly, the troll arc has served to more thoroughly "characterize" the entire purpose of the game, and give it much more meaning going forward. Furthermore, the troll story is inextricably entwined with the kids. Actions of the kids had influence over the way the troll adventure unfolded, and therefore the way their own universe was created (Rose's gamefaqs, the scratch they create, just to name what we know of). The kids' adventure is obviously heavily influenced by the trolls through direct communication, and therefore the trolls have a hand in causing the kids to do whatever it was they did to impact the troll's adventure, and so on. Willingly or not, they're all working toward the same outcome, toward creating our universe, and the universe the kids are trying to create, and whatever trouble puts all that in jeopardy. Remember that both the kids' and the trolls' chum handles are needed to make the full set of ACGT combinations. They are not two unrelated groups of players as they first appeared, nor are their universes unrelated. Sollux's shades, the ~ATH code, etc help illustrate this, that they are bifurcated, interwoven realities.

Even Act 5 is a microcosm of this idea. It is a bifurcated act. Act 5.1 is the troll half. Act 5.2 is the kid half. 5.2 even begins with two sets of curtains, red and blue. Blue symbolizes the troll universe, red symbolizes our universe. First we crossed through blue, then red.

One last thing I'll mention about all this. The whole creation myth angle of Homestuck was almost entirely inspired by the ludicrous creation myth in Problem Sleuth, the way GPI used his imaginary time traveling duplicates to create all the matter in the universe. I think that was one of my personal favorite ideas to come out of that story, in terms of scope and absurdity. So when I was considering ideas for the next story, I thought it would be fun to develop that topic further, but with a little less absurdity and more depth, sophistication and complexity. And for the creation myth to exist as the centerpiece of the game purpose and story.

First of all, if you stare at the sun for a while, you go blind. Even if that's not 100% technically true, that's the reality everyone understands. You don't need to be especially photosensitive.

When Terezi stared at the sun, her real self went blind. This is a simple fact.

When her dream self stared at Skaia, this is open to interpretation. Does staring into the heart of Skaia for a while cause your dream self to go blind? Maybe staring at it in conjunction with your real self staring at the sun is what does it? OR! Maybe staring at Skaia doesn't make your dream self go blind at all. Maybe her dream self went blind simply because her real self did, and like she explained to Karkat, her mental self image kept the blindness in her dreams because she wanted to be that way, because it helped her continue to connect with her lusus and learn a new way to see. There are a number of ways to look at this.

The psychic relay that made her sleepwalk also involves some subtleties. (Though this wasn't actually part of the question.)

Vriska commandeered Tavros's mind to get him to use his psychic powers. That's pretty obvious. He then communed with Terezi's dragon. The dragon then connected with the mind of sleeping Terezi. But what happens then does not appear to be straightup mind control, as Vriska usually employs. Terezi was happily sleepwalking along, not proceeding with the zombie shuffle that mind control victims usually exhibit.

It seems that the dragon's psychic ability was used to influence Terezi in a more subtle way, without issuing firm commands. More like a suggestion. It suggested in her dream that she get up, look into the sky and open her eyes. This is simultaneously implementing Vriska's revenge ploy by getting her real self to sleepwalk and look at the sun, as well as implementing the dragon's primal intent to get Terezi's dream self to become aware of Skaia and wake up. Her unhatched dragon, as a sort of mystical guide, presumably is aware of Skaia and her fate, and continues to act as such as it teaches her to see while blind in her dreams.

Vriska simply used the dragon's unharnessed impulse to do this as a matter of convenience, working under the constraints she had. She may have had this contingency prepared in advance even, much like Terezi had a plan prepared to take Vriska out utilizing Scratch.

I remember that, and it was in the mix of influences for sure. I recall there were others speculating about sun-staring as a cause. It's one reasonably obvious thing to speculate. What else is there? Daggers to the eyes... hot coffee spill? I don't know. The practical list is probably underwhelming.

But the "what" isn't all that interesting. It's the "how" that required a little thought and ingenuity.

Not how much it's grown, which it's obvious, but how it changes in nature so subtly and gradually.

Readers during PS had a certain energy reflected in the nature of the story. Hard to describe. Very meme and gag driven, but that's a bit simplistic.

Now the readers have a very different energy. The kind of readership that seems to be resonating with some of the soap opera qualities of the Hivebent drama, which is something so far afield of PS it's ridiculous.

And the really funny thing is there is a HUGE amount of overlap between these two groups of people. They have just gradually modified their appetites for the type of entertainment being dispensed.

Not everyone has though. Some stormed off in a huff when they saw John fuck around in his room for two solid months, or when we watched a bunch of alien kids get really emotional for three months. (although they are all still secretly visiting the website! shhhhh)

I always thought of MSPA as a pretty temporary thing in the long term. I really can't imagine it becoming ossified as this WEB BRAND for like a decade or more. That idea is really unpalatable to me for some reason.

They took a little longer than normal logs, but mostly because they were just longer. The fact that there were multiple participants from varying points on the timeline, including past and future duplicates of the same person, added a little complexity. But by now I'm pretty used to sorting through that kind of stuff.

But that complexity does breed longer logs, I found. It's hard to have them serve their purpose without making them longer.

I'm not immune to criticism nor do I regard my work as perfect at all. It has plenty of flaws and by and large I know what they are.

Understanding these flaws already might make me seem "immune", or at least indifferent to criticism. I can't recall being blindsided by an intelligent criticism which hadn't already occurred to me myself. Usually I look at a decision from a lot of angles, examine the pitfalls, and often proceed in spite of the pitfalls for whatever reasons I have. There are always reasons behind these judgments. Also a lot of what happens with MSPA is a learning process based on experimental approach. Experimentation is often what informs decisions against more universally sound creative judgment. But when the dust has settled after a certain experimental phase, I generally have all the faults with it well in hand, and many of them were anticipated. I can see myself what worked and didn't work so well. By the time a critic comes knocking they aren't telling me anything new. I've already spent ten times longer thinking about it than he has. Probably longer. Anyone trying to school me on this stuff frankly is just barking up the wrong tree.

Implicit in this is that I often agree with critics, especially if they really "got it". I agree qualitatively. What I don't agree with is critical editorializing. And example of a qualitative observation would be "this is a bit wordy" to which I respond "yes I agree." Where we differ is when the critic feels the need to say "and that's bad bad bad you should stop stop stop!" to which I reply "no no no!" Because obviously I already thought it through and accepted the consequences of that decision. It is what I wanted it to be, and exactly what I thought it would be, pitfalls and all, for reasons I can articulate if needed. Demanding critics want more from you though. They wish for concessions to their point of view. It seems more emotional than logical.

Many critics are very naive in this sense, and these people I would not even regard as real critics at all. More like just complainers. They leverage their dissatisfaction under the guise of criticism, and if their grievances are dismissed, the creator is accused of being deaf to criticism. A little like suitors spurned by a woman will accuse her of being icy. Creators have a responsibility to vet their critics, to know how deep the critic's appreciation and understanding of the material is first before putting value on their advice. To understand whether the critic is capable of quality thought and observation. To apply a critical process to the critic itself. Some critics believe they themselves are immune to criticism! Not all opinions and perspectives are equal, and it's dangerous and incredibly stupid for creators to treat them as such. Would you take advice on how to improve your life from a retarded person? You see, we actually do this every day. We vet those who would counsel us on our daily lives, who we would trust to guide us in the right direction.

I certainly don't look at any of it though. No longer than it takes to dispatch it from my browser upon incidental discovery.

Really bad fanfiction is somehow more offensive to me. If I read more than a couple sentences of it I immediately feel a little tainted as a writer. I kinda believe that bad writing is something you can "catch".

Also really overwrought SBaHJ fan comics. Those are worse than porn too.

SBAHJ like anything undergoes artistic evolution. It will gradually stray from original purpose to explore different artistic statements.

Do you really believe the goal is to strive for anything approaching realism at this point? To mimic a poorly constructed comic done in earnest?

Why does it seem like I'm trying too hard? It seems that way to you because you clearly have no idea what I am actually trying to do.

What if the model for the first few strips had persisted, and I'd adhered to it religiously? Would it have stayed funny? For how long? What latitude is there for testing the boundaries of those parameters? These are the types of things that people who aren't artists have a hard time grasping before they find themselves tapping away at a keyboard.

That said, if you want to see forced, you should check out much of the fan-drafted SBAHJs. Most of those people seriously have no idea how to dial it back.

You know, there has been some buzzin' about it and what not, but I think the truth is it was never actually that controversial.

I've sampled reactions to it all over the place, and it always stuck me as quite a small pocket of the overall audience that ever had any dissatisfaction with it. The same was also true at the beginning of Homestuck. It was a very different thing, and a few people here and there got really restless about it, and swore up and down that MSPA had crested with Problem Sleuth. And of course these sentiments were not in the least bit vindicated in the long run, once we stopped being up so close and personal with the tree of Act 1, and got a little distance from the forest that is HS. I've regarded the vocal minority's present dissatisfaction as the exact same thing. It hasn't deterred me in the least, and even though the recent "AH trolls the fans" thing seems like a strong rebuke of this dissent, it's really very mild one, if one at all. It is meant as playful and humorous.

Now on the FLIPSIDE of this, there is significant group of people that really liked the change in direction this arc presented. In fact, rather than functioning as a drag on the readership's interest, I have observed the opposite. The troll stuff has been like pouring rocket fuel on the fandom. Daily traffic has only gone UP since it started. More people than ever seem to be energetically buzzing about what's going on, debating the merits of the characters and the nature of the alien world, drawing more fan art than I could ever possibly keep track of, creating troll personas and stuff like that. These are not the typical results of making a mistake in a story's direction.

On the subject of, "Was the troll arc, and to some extent the existence of the trolls altogether, really an elaborate set up as a long con to troll the readers?"

Yes and no. There is a little truth to it, in the sense that creating alien kid characters who were both internet trolls, AND literal trolls could very well have been a kind of racial avatarization of my own semi-trolling tendencies as an author, which had been on display well before their appearance. Psyche-outs, cagey self referential stuff and the like, it's all a little spunky, and I remain aware of this, and this stuff does fall into a certain class of trolling. Totally granted.

But all that became much more tangible with the introduction of the trolls. Everything about the trolls was always at least a little antagonizing with varying degrees of playfulness, both to the other characters, and to the reader as well. Their text is a bit difficult to parse (Not impossible! Just enough to make you aware of additional reading effort.) They are all a little ornery, and as it turns out, excessively emotional. Their role in the plot is one of bumbling sabotage and interference with the protagonists. And finally, in maybe the most trollish display yet, their entire introduction through a "detour arc" clearly is a bit agitating to anyone eager to see some of these cliffhangers resolved. It's entirely in the spirit of the indentation they have already made on the story. The reader can either fight it (trolls win!) or roll with it and embrace it on the terms it's presented. (Trolls still win.)

And even within the arc, there are numerous explorations of the trolling theme, like addressing topics that are sure to get people worked up. Examining topics like juggalos, furry fetish porn, shipping, and intricate studies on sci-fi romance, ultimately spiraling into soap opera plot dynamics and character interactions, heavy with conversational drama and teenage histrionics. It's all fuel for getting readers riled up a bit, and if you read it and get this itchy, agitated feeling in the back of your mind, that sensation is called "being trolled".

SORT OF.

None of this should be taken literally as a head-on attempt to troll the reader. It's just not that black and white. The purpose here is still entertainment, and humor, and advancing the plot in ways that have not become clear yet. I think in working on the troll stuff I have learned a little about my own policy toward satire. It's never absolute. Everything I mock is always embraced in some way. The juggalo character, Gamzee, is a good example of this. When he was introduced as a juggalo, people could see the writing on the wall. Here we go, time to do the juggalo shtick and laugh at how ridiculous juggalos are and their weird trashy culture and everything. And we did do that, to an extent! But after the initial !?! moment of revealing a juggalo and getting all hot and bothered about it, that material actually began to be incorporated at face value. It was folded into his character profile, and he turned out to be a pretty lovable guy who likes clowns and a particular beverage, and embraces the memetic affiliation juggalos have with miracles as a form of spirituality. In no way is the character a referendum on how ridiculous and lame juggalos are anymore, or how much we should all think ICP sucks. In fact, in a weird way, he starts to embody a CELEBRATION of those elements. Which to be honest, I think is a pretty good way to handle satire. The same is true, in varying degrees, of the inclusion of fandoms' zeal for shipping (Nepeta), weird horse porn (Equius), LARPing, delving into highly emotional, overwrought romantic intrigue, and so on. All of it is handled in a tongue in cheek manner, as satirical fodder, BUT ALSO played totally straight in some respects, as raw material to define the characters and build the story in a way that takes the elements at face value. With MSPA I am always on the lookout for raw material to manipulate in esoteric ways, and its usually garnered through satire. But then I ride that material pretty hard, and before you even know what's going on, it's not satirical anymore! Ask yourself this: at what point did John's love of Con Air cease to be a mockery of the film, and became more of a SHRINE to it? Hard to say.

That doesn't mean we lose sight of the fact that this stuff is ridiculous. It's still plenty ridiculous. The juggalo movement still strikes me as awfully silly, and so does overzealous shipping. The thing is, we can mock stuff and that's fine. It doesn't mean that stuff demands excessive scorn, or can't be treated as a legitimate topic to roll with in a story. So I think drawing your own horse porn is pretty weird. But who am I to say that's REALLY so terrible? I'm not better than anybody. I'll poke fun at it for a while, but then I'll just roll with horse dicks with a straight face for a while too. Maybe have a beer with them. Turns out they're a good bunch of dicks when you get to know 'em!

And pretty clearly, all of this is followed through with acute self-awareness, which is probably just a kind of handicap I have to live with. I just can't help but be aware of everything I do and all the reasons I'm doing them and apply intense scrutiny to those reasons, and it's very hard for me to feign obliviousness. I guess I'm not that interested in trying. As such, MSPA has always been a pretty meta thing, and from time to time we'll blur into things like troll Andrew. I try to keep it fun. Personally, I find it funny. Spiking Cal is probably one of my favorite pages at this point.

Have you ever noticed how some of these faddy little widgets on the internet get really popular, which immediately exposes the quality of the coding? Formspring must have just been some dude's college programming project. Same goes for Twitter.

It's both. And MSPA is still largely a game parody. That didn't rally go away. Maybe diminished somewhat as other elements have been emphasized over strict parody.

Are these things really tropes, though? Is a game cursor wandering over a screen a trope?

Maybe it will get to the point where every imaginable subatomic bit of information that can be understood by human awareness will be regarded as a trope.

It's pretty amazing what tvtropes has managed to accomplish. It now monopolizes all information and conceptualization in its most abstract essence. Not even google and wikipedia combined could pull that off!

It's both. And MSPA is still largely a game parody. That didn't rally go away. Maybe diminished somewhat as other elements have been emphasized over strict parody.

Are these things really tropes, though? Is a game cursor wandering over a screen a trope?

Maybe it will get to the point where every imaginable subatomic bit of information that can be understood by human awareness will be regarded as a trope.

It's pretty amazing what tvtropes has managed to accomplish. It now monopolizes all information and conceptualization in its most abstract essence. Not even google and wikipedia combined could pull that off!

It's both. And MSPA is still largely a game parody. That didn't rally go away. Maybe diminished somewhat as other elements have been emphasized over strict parody.

Are these things really tropes, though? Is a game cursor wandering over a screen a trope?

Maybe it will get to the point where every imaginable subatomic bit of information that can be understood by human awareness will be regarded as a trope.

It's pretty amazing what tvtropes has managed to accomplish. It now monopolizes all information and conceptualization in its most abstract essence. Not even google and wikipedia combined could pull that off!

Stupidity is real. It's not made up. This is not the Bigfoot we are talking about. I have seen it shitting in my back yard. I can't take a snapshot of a serene woodland glade without its slouching hairy silhouette pocking up the lens. The stories are true. Legends are real.

There aren't actually that many other methods to use. If the purpose is to show scale, then one way or another, you need to compare the big thing to a smaller thing of known size. You can either do this with zooming, or chop out all the zooming and cut to the chase. But in the case of the sea monster holding the whale, the whale was so comparatively small you couldn't see it, and it no longer conveyed the sense of scale. The zoom was necessary in that case.

RE: Her last name, Peixes. I don't really know. These things can be open to interpretation. It's Portuguese for fish I think, and has something to do with the Pisces constellation. I think it's pronounced something like PAY-shez in Portuguese, but that's not necessarily the definitive pronunciation key here. It's up to you.

You could never launch into a story like this cold turkey. You could but it would be really difficult, forcing people to swallow a lot at once. I do think in some way Hivebent stands alone reasonably well, but part of what makes it compelling is the massive pre-education the reader had on the way up to this point. There are so many complex concepts that can now be taken for granted, while we explore a completely different story with new characters, without spending time developing those grounding concepts which is what we were doing for much of the preceding acts.

And yet those concepts are still being elaborated on all the same, through this totally new context. Part of the point of this (the MANY points) is to continue to develop the game they're playing, and demonstrate its incredible flexibility and how many ways it could possibly go. By showing an example of extreme difference, 12 players instead of 4, prototyping a bunch of monsters instead of silly things, how many different fanciful worlds there can be and how the political scene with the kingdoms can play out so differently, we're given a much better sense of this than when we were just told it. Showing this helps the reader continue to extrapolate through imagination the various ways this game could go, and also helps put in perspective how the kids' game is going and how off model they are.

There's a lot of purpose to this arc beyond serving as a cool tangent. Every step of the way we are constantly altering our perspective on what the main protagonists are facing. And when we finally come out of the woods of this thing and get back into the kids' story, our perspective will be completely different from where we left it. And I'm quite sure whatever unique energy is building in the Hivebent story, that will carry over to Homestuck proper when we pick it up again.

But all that said, I think it's cool to be able to tell a story like this in the middle of something fairly unlike it. To essentially inject a humorous scifi world-building tale, follow the complex lives of alien kids on a planet without adult supervision, raised by monsters, all playing a game over the internet. That's a fun premise, and it just wouldn't be the same if not nested inside a bigger story that already did so much of the dirty work. It would be a lot harder to pull off by itself.

I've heard a few and some are pretty good, but honestly I have trouble listening to even good ones. For some reason none of the pesterlogs feel right to me as real dialogue. This is probably because they were always meant to be true to life chat logs, typed not spoken. If I were writing what was meant to be spoken, I would write quite differently.

Sometimes it is for speed. And sometimes (as in that case) it was actually slower to do it that way than it would be to just draw it from scratch.

There is an idea which is behind reusing visuals like that, much like I reused the shot of Dave lying on the ground using his iPhone to show a crippled Tavros doing the exact same thing.

The idea is tied to the huge volume of textual callbacks, reusing phrases from the narrative and bits of dialogue, tweaking them sometimes. This happens probably more than anyone realizes. You could possibly read the story ten times and not catch them all. Nothing is safe from reuse. The thing is a litany of a thousand refrains, visual, verbal and conceptual.

So what is the idea? I don't feel like elaborating on it THAT much now, because I would probably type forever. Basically, it's about building an extremely dense interior vocabulary to tell a story with, and continue to build and expand that vocabulary by revisiting its components often, combining them, extending them and so on. A vocabulary can be (and usually is) simple, consisting of single words, but in this case it extends to entire sentences and paragraph structures and visual forms and even entire scenes like the one linked above. Sometimes the purpose for reiteration is clear, and sometimes there really is no purpose other than to hit a familiar note, and for me that's all that needs to happen for it to be worthwhile. Triggering recognition is a powerful tool for a storyteller to use. Recognition is a powerful experience for a reader. It promotes alertness, at the very least. And in a lot of cases here, I think it promotes levity (humor! this is mostly a work of comedy, remember.) Controlling a reader's recognition faculty is one way to manipulate the reader's reactions as desired to advance the creative agenda. In this case I'm not exactly sure what that agenda is all the time, and in truth there probably isn't any serious agenda there. This story, though at times seeming diabolically put together, is still pretty light reading after all. if anything I'm just striving for a certain pitch in density with the all the multithreaded symbolism and endless internal reference. Think of it as a symphony and everything I've referred to as belonging to a vocabulary are really just notes, working together in a really complicated harmonic structure.

On Alternia, it came from the ruins. The code for the game was contained by the sequence of hieroglyphs on the walls.

It's pretty heavily implied this is also true for the ruins on Earth. It's also pretty heavily implied Jade's grandpa had something to do with the development of the game, since he was the first to explore those ruins.

John is adorable because he is honest and heroic and nerdy and a good friend.

I named all the trolls (their trolltags) as a fun exercise some time ago, way before I needed them all. It was like a puzzle. I had the 12 remaining DNA letter combinations, and had to think of a zodiac-pertinent handle for each. Which is easy at first, but gets more challenging when you start winding down to only a few signs and letter pairs left.

Like, ok, I've got CC left and have to think of something reminiscent of pisces. HMMMMM.

It was fun playing with the logic that tied a name to a sign. It would have been dull if everything was a straightup pun. Sometimes the word concealed the sign in it. terminallyCapricious contains capric, i.e. capricorn. gallowsCallibrator contains libra (I also believe this word pair evokes the image of a scale, in a way. A scale of nooses.) Others neither involve wordplay or a hidden word, like adiosToreador. But there is no way you could mistake that for anything but taurus.

A curly ram horn is actually a pretty complicated object. I draw fast and loose and a lot of times emphasize gesture and stylization over precision. If you're looking for rigid fidelity to a couple of loopy horns I am afraid you're barking up the wrong tree!

No. The objective here is to introduce the characters, and not much else. What happens in their session, the details etc are not as important (to some extent, because we already know the overall outcome). But finding out who they all are is the mission, and doing that requires the substance of a storyline, and a logical sequence of events, whether past, present or future.

Do you actually think it was a real expression of my personal disinterest in a plot point, or the story as a whole?

I mean was it really SO COMPELLING that it demanded a straight dramatic sale? The last guy to consider the dead all along hook to be really earth shattering stuff was M. Night circa 10 years ago. Yikes, sorry just a dash of genre savvy wiseassery RUUUUUUINED that for you.

Not all of these plot points are especially grandiose in my mind, and are not to be treated with velvet gloves at the expense of losing the light tone that pervades the whole thing. When I feel like a plot development really is major and demands some dramatic clout surrounding it, I treat it more seriously. I think the "Check." moment when the bunny defended John from Jack was a good example of that. There are some others.

But the big ghost-all-along reveal... nahhh. Besides, if you didn't see it coming, it's still plenty exciting if you can somehow manage to summon the fortitude to not let the joke ruin your day.

But this probably has to do with the fact that every time I open it, it breaks the website and I can't even POST the drawings of all the cool suggestions people are in such a frenzy to overwhelm me with.

But aside from that, I think it was a brewing antipathy. Brewing and smoldering.

People ask me about ads from time to time, and I should point out that I often go for many days without even looking at my website, aside from the brief glance required to get new pages up. Ads come and go without my awareness, approval, or faintest concern.

I hope I might dispel the notion that I am manicuring a tidy brand here with this website. I mean, maybe I SHOULD be. But I'm not. I'm just making some cool images and a cool story and dropping pages here every day.

Arguably the toughest one to parse. But he doesn't actually have that many conversations in the grand scheme of all this.

GC: SW4PS L3TT3RS "AEI" with "431"

Also somewhat challenging. But we really had a long time to get used to her speech pattern. Plenty of conversations before the troll arc. The letters are caps, matching the size of the numbers for increased readability (deliberate).

Parsing these is just a matter of flipping a switch in your head, on just a few characters, which bear pretty strong resemblance to those they stand for.

Now I understand if this still isn't ideal for perfectly comfortable reading, and I wouldn't want to read a whole book like that for instance, but when you take into account the "hard ones" will occupy probably less than 20% of all dialogue, this whole issue is just dumb.

I guess I could make a chart. Then again there's all sorts of stuff out there I have nothing to do with, keeping track of it. MSPA wiki, tvtropes articles, material circulating in the forums...

Some people say they wouldn't mind a whole act of troll stuff, or even a whole year.

Then again, some say it's already too much of a diversion from the "real story".

So as usual, tough to please everyone. All I can say is, this arc is serving the exact purpose it needs to serve for the bigger picture, and it'll take exactly as long as it needs to take. If the issue is it's too much of a tangential slowdown from the main story, all I can do is point to the fact that all of Homestuck is constructed almost exclusively of meandering garden paths. Even though these are new characters in a completely different place and time, there's not much new here. This sort of thing has happened before. Introducing WV in act 2 seemed like a massive detour at the time, but later its tremendous relevance was illuminated. In hindsight, I don't think impatience has ever been warranted or vindicated. It all eventually gets tied together, usually pretty maniacally, and sometimes explosively, if given enough time.

Whoops there I go again, talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the question.

Felt, no. They were just green guys with powers. And I thought of their powers on the fly.

Trolls...

Coming up with them is the easy part. Introducing them through the "Homestuck fomula", one after another, giving them distinct personalities, roles in the dynamic of the full ensemble, roles in the short story arc to drive the action, distinct voice, chat syntax, appearance, lusus, room, house, weapon, modus, game world, all presented through a fictional alien culture I'm building on the fly simultaneously, and doing it in such a way that's fairly engaging and won't take FOREVER

I did always think from the start that the basic gimmick of the format had a lot of viral potential.

But now looking back, I feel like the bulk of the readership has fallen into orbit on account of the preposterous amount of content I've generated in a short timeframe, plus the overall electricity and media volatility of the whole thing in its totality. I picture a great many gawkers gathered around a storm, and most of them can't decide whether what they're looking at is spectacular or horrifying. But they can't look away, and then more gather around to see what everyone's gawking at. And then THEY'RE trapped too.

This is a really odd question. I'll accept the premise for a moment, and start rambling.

I think I actually remember when I realized I WASN'T funny. It was a really long time ago, maybe when I was in high school. And I drew some dumb bullshit comics of some vaguely humorous nature and assumed they were objectively funny because they were meant to be. They were "funnies". And those are automatically funny.

But then a little later I took a look at those comics. One series was about a singing snail, and I guess there were some others. And I thought, "Holy shit, this isn't funny at all. What was I thinking?" And then later, gradually, I put a more concerted effort into understanding what is funny. I think it was a pretty slow climb. It was also a gradual process of becoming less of a dumbass. Dumbasses think stupid shit is funny, and that can be a major handicap.

The biggest key to being funny is to not be a dumbass. Really stupid people have a hard time being funny (intentionally). The smarter you are, the better the odds you have of being funny. Note that sometimes you run into really smart people who aren't funny, or lack a sense of humor. But note, this is VERY STRONG evidence that they are not nearly as smart as they appear to be! In my view at least.

When I equate humor as a product of intelligence, I mean it is primarily a product of awareness. The more you are aware of, and the more insight you have into a myriad of things, the more you will be able to successfully illuminate absurdity, and the more clever ways to accomplish this you will be able to conceive of. Awareness lends itself to an agile imagination. This is why stupidity is such comedic poison. Awareness of the world and that from which you draw your satirical muse is deadened by the mind-blunting forces that are associated with stupidity. These forces primarily are a lack of concentration and dedication, and inalertness to all that surrounds you and all content you are exposed to. As well as being quick to judge and label whatever does manage to get through the pinhole. Those are brain killers and comedy killers. They lead to hackneyed work at best, and incredibly awful, prejudicial, bigoted stuff at worst.

Now I don't mean to say I'm a real smart guy and that's why I'm funny, or EVEN VICE VERSA. I'm just pointing out that, in thinking back, becoming less obtuse and deepening my understanding of as much as possible was a turning point in beginning to understand what is and isn't funny.

Why don't YOU go move the 10 ton skull off the doomsday scale??? Oh, not so easy, is it!

Anyway, what would be the point? Disarming the device in some way wouldn't have helped the egg hatch. From a young troll girl's perspective, it's just some diabolical ancient contraption rigged in the woods, probably meant to stay that way forever. Why mess with it?

And promptly disappoint them in ensuing pages, and somewhat mitigate the impact of such content which arrives later.

So yeah I guess that's a bad idea.

A big part of the experience of reading it I think is this liftoff it achieves with its gradual escalation in every respect, in story and format.

The fact that it's just so "straight" at the beginning, and comparatively bland, is a major part of that stage setting, and something I was very much cognizant of while making it. Much to the lament of those so eagerly anticipating a new story that would instantly echo the magnitude of the final throes of Problem Sleuth.

I can't say a blame anyone who is deflected by the early story for its lack of fireworks. But they are also missing out on an intended effect the work is meant to achieve through its up front banality. This is an unavoidable tradeoff.

I'm not even answering your question anymore, I'm just talking to myself.

I don't know, honestly a lot of these trolltags were just silly throwaway phrases to match up all the leftover ACGT initials. I never thought I'd introduce most of them. But it's been one of the fun things about it, taking that initial phrase and building something around it to make it logical.

When I originally thought of the phrase "gallowsCalibrator" for instance, I pictured some guy, someone probably much more generically malevolent. Then I'm sure I thought, pffffffff, never gonna introduce THAT guy.

And yet, the greater story purpose for the trolls has always remained the same, and has not yet been revealed. I just thought that purpose would be delivered through a more generic, unseen vehicle of internet trolls bugging kids through messages. But I was wrong.

Not really. I think the main thing is I would have a real hard time writing a character who I didn't personally like, or at the very least, find interesting. So in order to make it so I don't hate writing someone's lines, I make it so I like them in some way. And in doing so, I guess often other people do as well.

Getting 12 characters out of the woodwork, even if some are examined a bit more superficially than others, is apparently a pretty serious undertaking. Ideally, each introduction will not be quite as formulaic as the trend presently appears, and this will present opportunity for acceleration.

But I still think it might be another 3 weeks or so with this arc, to put out an estimate with a safe margin. It's just astonishing how quickly time moves versus the rate of artistic production.

I guess if the winding road through Homestuck has yielded anything like a formal policy on Flash stuff, it's that I really don't want to fire up Flash at all unless I'm going to make it COUNT.

I think early in HS I was still figuring out what role Flash would play, and I was still operating under this idea that I would sprinkle in lots of quirky little Flash pages here and there to complement the static stuff, as a compromise to the original idea that every page would be Flash.

Very gradually, this model shifted. It's really nothing like that at all anymore, and the real power of Flash in this format, for this particular story, I think has been revealed to be in adding serious cinematic power to the major moments, and not littering the more run of the mill content with funny little Flash tidbits and short musical interruptions. Not that I think the early content that had that stuff was bad. Not at all. It was all a great part of this thing's evolution.

That stuff doesn't really feel right for where this thing is now though. Like strife pages, mini games, 20 second musical interludes, etc. And effort is a factor here. There comes a time when effort has to be conserved to make sure everything that's happening is contributing constructively to an ultimate conclusion. Doing something like a strife page now would feel like WAY too much of a diversion when looking at the effort required. That wasn't a factor on the slow build up to this though. In fact doing stuff like that was part of the point of the build. To find out what this mixed media story experience could be. So pushing boundaries with Flash for some not especially critical content was perfectly suitable.

Saying they've hardly even started is just nonsense. They've come a long way.

We can look at his through our obsessive gamer goggles and say "man they've only gone through 1 gate! fuck that!"

Or we can look at it through our storyteller goggles (i.e. my goggles) and realize shit like that doesn't matter. Are we REALLY going to sit there and believe progress will be meted out through the rigorous, literal gaming logic presented? Are we going to go through every gate, watch every subquest, slay every monster and gain every level?

Or is it going to become increasingly less granular, as the trend has shown? Leapfrogging over the unnecessary, the logic and mechanics already wrung of their story mileage through the intensive granularity early in the story? How could I rationally proceed without doing this?

We see evidence of this in the troll arc, as we hop way into the future and back into the past pretty often, making use of all these facts we know, about the game and about the storyline. There's not much to hide or suspend about the way the game works, because we already know. There's not much drama inherent in guarding their future events heavily, because again, we were brought into this with knowledge of where they wind up, and how a generic game session works. The point is to draw out all the characters, show some facets of their story in ways that illuminate aspects of their characters, and ways that help tie their story to the main arc. It all has a purpose, and that purpose can't be fully known until we get there.

I haven't watched much TV lately. I watched all the Star trek series into the ground, but I was never much of a trekkie. I don't really think Lost was an especially nerdy show. it had a huge audience full of really regular joes who just liked mystery. I liked Arrested Development a lot. Might actually be my fav all time show.

I'm probably not nearly as nerdy as my work makes me seem. I hardly ever play video games or anything like that. Or read nerdy books or play rpgs. My readers could probably nerd me under the table (a table littered with dice and rulebooks!)

Noooooo. Sprites are quite a pain in the ass to draw. I never feel like an artist when I draw sprites. I feel like a pixel engineer.

Whenever I need to draw something new, and it isn't sprite-based, it's because I'm essentially taking the easy route. Drawing a character with more realistic proportions in cool poses and settings and stuff is relatively effortless compared to sprite work, and doing stuff like zooming 400% so I can fuss over a couple pixels so someone's fingers don't look like total garbage.

Your question can be the chicken sandwich question. "The Chicken Sandwich Question" will be the new name for the last question I answer, and leave at the top for weeks.

I definitely don't like Cage much, nor do I hate him. But I also wouldn't describe my employment of his service as ironic. It's similar to irony, but it's a concept that I truly think eludes verbalization. You would need to sift the mists of my subconscious, and treat the yields to a prolonged, unpleasant examination.

To extract a more practical slice of the issue for the microscope, early in the story I decided I needed something really ludicrous to harp on repeatedly, and ALSO for that thing to prove to be, through a deliberately circuitous path, immensely critical to the plot. This was the bunny. I guess you could say Cage was along for the ride.

If the question is "Why the bunny?" the answer is, because there is nothing you could possibly select to be the critical linchpin of a story that is more stupid than authentic memorabilia from the film Con Air, specifically the stuffed rabbit that Cameron Poe gave to his daughter at the end. You can try to think of something dumber, but you won't succeed.

They're like these big snorting muscular monsters with these huge faces, and they often freak out, and we RIDE THEM. That's INSANE.

Puppets are funny for some reasons I guess. It's really hard to describe. Like people decided they wanted to make these... smaller fake people? And make them talk and do things. And on their quest they fell ass backwards into the uncanny valley. It's actually kind of a tragedy when you think about it.

This question is 5 days old. I have not seen another question about it posted more recently!

It's amazing how what seems like a big deal gets forgotten so quickly. People have already more or less forgotten there were ever different songs. In a couple months, the song swaps will be a point of obscure trivia. The whole topic will fade into the lore of the site, known by few and regretted by none (except maybe one person).

I was never under any impression swapping them was the wrong thing to do, or that the new songs were inferior. They were always great, and sorry to say, complaints fell on deaf ears. I'm sort of pathologically unshakable on decisions like that, or really any creative decision.

I guess some of my answers seem testy. Mainly I take opportunities to make humorous remarks, and occasionally, I APPEAR to do so at the expense of another. This is an illusion though. I think everyone's great.

It isn't really a deliberate act, but neither is it how I behave in the real world. I have had a long creative career on the internet. Most of it in the shadows, and much of it established in the tradition of trolling the wide eyed and unsuspecting. The good kind of trolling. The funny kind. Some of that comes through in my current work, and more recently, somewhat literally.

There really is no 4th wall AH character, as is separate from the narrative voice throughout the entire story. That is me, or more specifically, my internet voice. The characters are me too, but I suppose are aspects of my personality that are hyper-accelerated for characterization purposes. If they get a bit sassy at times, and they do, and my narrative voice gets sassy at times, and it does, it shouldn't be a surprise that I do as well.

Why did you use a bunch of different letters and words in your sentence? What's up with that? And look! What's that curly thing at the end? The one with the dot under it?? <- Oh shit, there they are again!!!!

No. Some of the trolls share certain personality traits with some of the kids. But there's no formula for it. And it's certainly not as simple as "She's the troll-Jade!" and such. That's not how I view it, or how I planned it.

Unless I'm just not getting the question. Why does it matter whether shes on the ground? Gates take you to different locations.

That's like being on top of the Empire State Building, and needing to fly to L.A. So you go downstairs to go to the airport. But the moment you get to the 1st floor, you say, damn we can't go to L.A. now! We're on the ground already!

Some of these big ideas are like a slow rolling thunder instead of a lightning bolt. In fact, maybe all of them are. It's really hard to pinpoint where exactly major developments originated from.

I think it started from the very simple fact that the two pairs of kids looked similar, and had some profile similarities. And then there was the fact that John's nanna looked to Jade, and her grandpa looked like John. This begged the obvious question, are nanna/granpa actually Jade/John sent back in time??? Which is so obvious, it would be stupid if it panned out like that. So i think creating an explanation for that presented a challenge. An explanation that was somewhat original and completely unexpected, but made sense and used the existing parameters of the story.

There was also a ridiculous drawing I did which was a satirical crack pairing of Rose's mom and Dave's bro, just cause the idea of those two together seemed so absurd. But that actually may have influenced the outcome too.

There is absolutely not going to be a long boss battle in HS like there was with DMK.

I kind of regret that that is the inevitable expectation people will have.

With PS, the emphasis was on general gaming satire, and the neverending boss battle was part of that. There was no major plot to satisfy, other than escaping an office, and defeating this monster.

HS has a complicated plot. It is an actual story, and will be wrapped up the way actual stories are meant to be. Will there be service to the gaming parallels present in HS too, as there were with the strife pages? Sure. But an infinite boss fight serves no purpose in this context other than to aggravate an audience. It was ok in Problem Sleuth because there was nothing more to it than that. The battle was a purpose unto itself, strung together with the ridiculous and the surreal and the absurd.

I'm pretty keenly aware of how much dust I've let the far future arc gather, but it's kind of made up for by the fact that there's been such heavy focus on the stories of those same characters during their pre-exile lives.

Same way PM got there. He took a shuttle shortly after, and followed PM. He saw PM get clobbered by HB, and went to recover the scepter she dropped, while she had her hands full chopping off HB's head.

Two, I think in general it's potentially a bit toxic for authors to be reading RPing of their stuff. It seems like there's always potential, no matter how you steel yourself against the terrible writing, for contamination.

I'm not sure I understand. Do you want me to point the homepage to a more recent page? I like keeping it at the beginning for newcomers.

If it's just "did you know how crazy it would get" the answer's yes. That was always the intention. Perhaps not intention so much as grim understanding. I was going off the advancement of PS as a model, and expected to duplicate or surpass that degree of escalation from the very start.

No. But there were similarities between the two pairs for aesthetic reasons, and some other reasons I guess. Bifurcation in broad personality type. The 4 character designs were drawn before page 1, so things were very loose back then. I left it open, and the cross-similarities between pairs, specifically between Jade and John, led me to get some steam behind the idea that these two very vaguely had "something to do with each other".

What they had to do with each other was something pieced together very organically over the development of the plot. We saw they shared identical towers on the same moon. The logic that they had something to do with each other naturally led to the same principle for Rose and Dave. They got a moon too.

This sort of stuff is all so gradual, and pieced together from so many smaller events, it's hard to pinpoint exactly when an idea originally took shape.

But the idea that they all had that origin was not pulled out of thin air. It was in the works for a good while, and a lot of foundation was laid for it. I would say it had its beginnings when I first introduced the concept of ectobiology, in Rose's next door lab when she made an unsuccessful paradox clone, a two headed cat. The thoughts weren't far off then, like "Maybe this weird way of cloning someone is how the kids were made? Maybe for that matter they created themselves?" Doesn't get more paradoxical than that, and thus wholly in the spirit of the fictional science, and in the spirit of the slowly rolling thunder that is this work's accumulating cache of themes.

But I think was sold it for me was when I got the idea to mix the pairs of slime from their respective guardians. The whole weird mess struck me as an especially novel origin story, and the thought of making these 8 babies all at once was just ridiculous enough to be irresistible. Not just because of the mad science/time travel/paradoxical novelty, but because of the new light it put the characters under. Especially the guardians I think. These weird automaton-like authority figures, mostly obstacles in the early going, are quite probably very much like the kids, just at different stages in their weird lives (i.e. the ones where they lose their facial features). They're all kind of like siblings in a way, even if not all biological. (Though some are!) And I think you could pick up on that from some of the early interactions, that for instance Rose was likely a very similar person to her mom. Her mom just happened to be an adult!

The origin story also lent a lot more relevance to John's designated handle, exctoBiologist. This was never something that was supposed to be significant at all. It was some funny word that tied into his interest of ghosts, and Ghostbusters. (The word was also lifted from an old comic I wrote.)

But now that seems like it was extremely important from the getgo, like it was all FORESHADOWIN' AND SHIT. But of course it's just yet again me connecting another one of these million dots to some others, when the dots were never actually meant to be connected.

I think very few major developments are pulled out of thin air, even if they appear to come from out of nowhere. There is almost always some foundational work for it. These things arrive through the series of details which lead to their cognition in the first place. You can always trace it backwards and find the clues that were pointing to it all along.

I've thought that the closest thing to being true is that Lost is very much the sort of story I would try to write if left to my own devices, in terms of structure and complexity and involvement of scifi and the supernatural.

Except it would be funny, and not as heavy handed and dour all the time.

Probably. But any time I come up with backstory stuff and think it won't be necessary, it just finds a way in there anyway.

The fact that nanna and grandpa were raised by Sassacre (before he died) and Betty Crocker was an example of this. It was a funny backstory idea I had quite some time ago, mainly in the form of joking with myself, and said "There's no WAY I'm going to work that in!" And yet here we are.

And somehow when it happens it still manages to feel like it's an important part of the story. At least for me.

One of the things I am most proud about in Homestuck is the fact that I have managed to elevate Betty Crocker to a position of critical relevance to the story.

I think creators probably tend to be proud of really stupid things about their stuff a lot of times.

The only thing I would describe as tedious would be setting up a Flash file from scratch, getting the preloader ready to go and everything. I don't mind working long hours on an animation, but I kind of want to get right into it, not spend an hour setting it up.

Rewarding? I don't know. Everything is rewarding.

I enjoy writing the pesterlogs. Probably because it's relaxing. I sit here and go tap tap tap. Instead of ranging around with my stylus like a wild animal, hitting the undo button, and muttering to myself now and then. Writing is easy. Sometimes I think I'd rather just be a writer, and I could say "I'M A WRITER" when people asked me.

There are exactly two words I pulled out of the thesaurus for that. coriaceous and adumbratives.

With the first, I was just wondering if there was a totally ridiculous fancy word for leathery. It turned out there was.

With the second I was looking for an old timey word specifically to nounify for that purpose. The correct form, the adjective, means foreshadowing. In the noun context, I guess it's some vague assortment of wizardly prognostication talismans? I can't claim to be an authority on this.

The thing is, AND and OR have graceful, easily understood means of being achieved through physical punch cards, by overlapping or double punching. How would these more exotic methods be achieved? You could of course go through the motions of computing them, calculating the new code, typing the code and punching it, but it loses the simplicity of original basic idea that lead to the combinations in the first place. Would going through such machinations just to invoke these more obscure operations actually be interesting? Probably not.

Last summer I was looking into making an MC flash game with Gankro. Of course that proved to be too much work so the idea was quickly discarded. But these were the villains I drafted for that purpose. I later adapted them to the intermission. But had them lying around way in advance, so they made it onto Dave's wall.

Trying to "get it out there" when your site is only one comic deep shows a misapprehension of the medium you are stepping into.

No one is going to care about a webcomic that consists of only one comic, no matter how good it is. And at this early stage, putting emphasis on the attention your work will receive before any substantial work is done will be a severe creative detriment.

Popularity will always be an inscrutable cross product of novelty, quality, dedication, and luck. Unless you catch crazy lightning in a bottle, it will take at least a year to discover how your formula pans out, probably longer.

Don't even bother looking at your stat tracker. Focus on making something good.

Even then, it wasn't really a true retcon, because I had originally intended to draw the scar but forgot, and didn't get around to fixing it for some time. In fact I actually waited until Jack was eye-gouged in the intermission, specifically to make people go ???????

I don't know about having a magical brain, but I don't keep many notes at all.

I have an HS.txt file, which contains every command in the story so far. That's where I write the commands and below-image text before I post it all.

That file also contains the chum handles of kids and the trolls, their corresponding colors and zodiac signs, the names of all the Felt, a few GPS coordinates, and that's about it.

I never take anything like "plot notes". I just tend to remember all the details. I wrote the whole recap from memory.

I don't even have a very good memory. I forget stuff all the time. But when it comes to story details, I just remember it all for some reason. Which is probably why the thing reads like a chronicle of a million callbacks. Almost every page is calling back something from earlier in the story, whether it's some obscure item or a turn of phrase used by a character or the narrator. Most of this nonsense is just readily available in my rapid recall cache, so it all gets pounded repeatedly.

With the exception of PM and the White Queen, there has been no indication any white agents will be especially consequential.

The white kingdom appears to have a more passive posture, as if playing defense. The black kingdom is on offense, and therefore more aggressive by nature. As such, it's more likely that nefarious key players will emerge on the dark side specifically to cause trouble, like Jack and co. If Prospit were more active in the espionage game (at least in this session) we'd probably have seen corresponding white agents in the spotlight.

Jack is clearly a special case. While the kings and queens abide by certain rules and let the battle play out with certain order and discipline, Jack is more aggressive and ambitious, and more dangerous for that reason.

Which is not to say he's more powerful with a ring than a queen is. A ringed queen could certainly be a very powerful entity, who sits back on the throne for a long time until she's ready to put herself in the action, much like a queen in a real game of chess. What makes Jack more troublesome is his temper, and his will to break the rules.

Part of the purpose of the intermission was to covertly begin characterizing a villain through a back door approach. We learned a lot about his character, even though it wasn't even technically the same character, and never suspected we were getting a primer on the key villain who would rise to power. This was the plan.

Adding || to the mix was kind of necessary to keep the hole patterns from whittling down to nothing, as would be the case if you just kept &&-ing everything.

Not that most people care about this, or even understand it really.

Computer people frequently harp on the fact that it should be the bitwise '&' and '|' operators rather than the boolean '&&' and '||'.

Which I guess is technically true. But the first and most important point is I didn't like how they looked as single characters. Especially '|' looked stupid to me. The double chars are more expressive, and perfectly understandable if you're a coder, and meaningless if not.

But aside from that, what's to say &&/|| wouldn't have that meaning in this application context? It's completely up to the author of a language to draft the meaning of operators. Various chars can have many different meanings across different languages. They often do.

Card A && Card B in this universe simply means, for each bit, evaluate Bit A && Bit B.

Here is something I wrote about 5 years ago, back when the whole topic was more novel to discuss.

How to be Funny on the Internet: Lesson 1

The Internet is nothing if not a boundless population of aspiring comedians. They utilize this uncensored medium as an incubator of sorts for their abilities as humorists before exploding onto the standup circuit. While this will is universal, being a natural humorist is far from it. Luckily, I have a roadmap that will guide you towards the appearance of being funny on the Internet, if strictly adhered to.

Mention Ninjas.

“A blur of black in a dim room. As the emperor ponders his koans, he cracks an eyelid. But it’s too late. Who else could make off with ancient scrolls and the lion’s share of a kind emperor’s spine before the shutter has yet swung closed from entry? If your answer was ‘not a ninja’, you’re fucking retarded.”

Ninjas are evidently hilarious. Particularly if alluded to in a manner that might be construed as tongue-in-cheek. But not completely. You don’t want to come off like you’re making fun of ninjas, because it is common knowledge that they are awesome.

If you are unlearned in the vicissitudes of cyberspace, you may find this confusing. I will try to explain. The first thing to realize: ninjas are awesome. There is nothing not awesome about them. They are practically the archetypical embodiment of awesomeness. So what exactly is so funny about them? Actually (and this is what may be hard to understand), nothing at all. When a ninja is invoked in any context, the response promotes the illusion that something humorous was said. But what has actually occurred is a mutual celebration of ninjas’ all-around awesomeness, kind of like an “implied high five”.

But wait, there’s more. You don’t want to get too wrapped up in how awesome ninjas are. That would be comedic seppuku. This will breed an attitude of reverence, and you begin to take them too seriously. Taking things seriously is nerdish, and very unfunny, especially on the Internet. You will become the target of ridicule, rather than targeter. This is why you must take a step back, and strike that intuitive balance between reverence for, and an outright mockery of ninjas. The joke becomes the fact that they are awesome, and they become MORE awesome because they are the joke. Place them in curious juxtapositions, mix them with references to pop culture. You’ll get the hang of it.

And one final thought. Once you have digested all of this, and then mastered it, realize this profound scrap: the joke is actually the joke. Meditate on THAT.

Mention Pirates:

Pirates are also hilarious, and mentioning them will make you hilarious as well. This is for a similar set of reasons that make ninjas are funny. They are awesome. But awesome for different reasons. True, both classes share themes of danger, deadliness, and being generally badass. But while ninjas convey stealth, precision, and cunning, pirates evoke a sense of adventure, bravado, and foolhardy swagger. Their passion for buried riches is legendary, and they are not too proud to sing and dance either, provided a steady flow of rum. Mentioning pirates will conjure visions of all these things, and your friends will be enamored of your ruggedly adventurous sensibilities.

But as is the case with ninjas, your deployment of pirate references must also be tongue-in-cheek. You don’t want to come off as actually being into pirates seriously. That would be idiotic. Again, it’s like a verbal high five in celebration of pirates and what they represent. Consider a literal high five for a moment, between a couple of guys. It’s not about the momentary slapping of skin. It’s a symbolic gesture celebrating good times. If it were actually about the touching, the feeling of the other male’s skin on yours, and that’s what you liked about the high five, your mate would quickly become uncomfortable as you prolonged the gesture, caressing his palm. He would think you were gay. This brings us to the next point…

Call Things “Gay”.

Being associated with homosexuality on the Internet, particularly being called “gay”, is to be avoided. On the other hand, calling people and things “gay” yourself is a good way to help you in your quest to be funny. It lets people know the following:

1) You aren’t too politically correct to humorously equate homosexuality with something negative. This is not to say you dislike gays or the practice of being gay. You just know how to stay loose and have fun, you know?

2) You clearly have opinions on things, particularly dislikes. Hating things, or more importantly, appearing to hate things, is a really excellent way to create the illusion that you have interesting thoughts, and a complex set of criteria for evaluating things for quality. This will intrigue people, who may secretly fear that your outlook on which things are gay might be more sophisticated than their own. Who knows, you may get some converts to your (largely fictional) set of values.

Call Things “Retarded”.

If you don’t see why this word by itself is milk nostril-evacuatingly side-splitting, you’re fucking retarded.

Conversation Exercises:

Actor A: “Hey man, that website you showed me the other day was so gay.”

Actor B: “You must be retarded. You’re so retarded, your grandmother was raped by fucking pirates.”

Actor A: “Don’t say shit about my grandmother. She WAS a pirate. Trained by secret ninjas to do some totally un-gay moves on retarded gay people like you.”

The themes in this lesson you have noticed, and indeed the key most Internet-driven humor, are:
- Mentioning things. By mentioning funny things, you seem funny.
- Use 2 hilarious words a lot.
- Communicate poorly developed opinions with those words.

With a little practice, these rudimentary skills will be yours. Try using Google to dig up a picture of a ninja for your e-journal. Use the word “gay” to describe the next movie you see, even if you like it. Oh man, I’m laughing already!

probably can town, but not even because of the town itself. it lead to WV identifying himself as a mayor, which lead to the civic role themes for other exiles, and the fact that those themes carried over to their former roles in the kingdoms, which became the vehicles for certain plot objectives.

short term planning of things like that happens, and it seems really whimsical at the time of the idea, but then execution of the ideas gets delaaaaayed, and then suddenly the plans seem not so short term anymore. (from my perspective. from your perspective, these things still seem like bombshells i guess.)

both of those concepts mentioned were thus planned as such more than a month in advance i think, and i just hung on to the ideas until they were ready to spring.

but then there are little adjustments that happen in the execution which i don't plan, and just pull out spontaneously. often this involves scaling back an idea because it's a bit too complicated to depict in the hot frenzy of grinding out a flash animation. a lot of times i think i have more time in an animation to squeeze more events in, but in reality, it's really easy to chew up the minutes of a song with a few simple cinematic events, and you turn around and you're out of time.

that phenomenon leads to a lot of the density present in the animations. segments where seconds are going by and things are flying by so fast you barely notice all the detail coming together to tell the story, so you have to replay it a few times to get it.

but that's fine, it's part of the format being forged here. in a video game cut scene, you don't really always have the luxury or inclination to go back and replay it. here you do, and replays are actually a fairly critical part of digesting everything.

i think pride stopped being an active concept for me once i got in a groove. hence i was probably most proud of the first strife john had with his dad, which at the time seemed pretty radical. it now feels pretty old hat and each one i do is just another plank slotted into this story's platform. a sense of pride and accomplishment will come again when i can roll a ball bearing across that completed platform without any bounces or skips.

i don't know, but it's pretty mysterious. it happens all the time. the most important lesson i have taken from working on mspa is that i am sort of magic, like this weird little man from a very obscure pocket of irish mythology called a "leprechaun".

GC's... no longer than anyone else's. except for the extra "syntax burden", which is pretty minor.

most of the character writing is fairly stream of consciousness for me. i write pretty fast and don't edit much.

the ones that are most time consuming are when i have to think of complex mechanics beyond mere funny conversation. like when trolls are talking to the kids from different points in the timeline, influencing past/future conversations in various ways.

this might sound lame, but i had the idea for the self-insert a long time ago, and decided then if i did it, i'd make myself wear the sepulchritude shirt. i think i decided that when that shirt was newer and more of a novelty.

BUT.

it actually sort of makes sense, since the 4th wall thing came on the heels of jack noir's rise to power, which visually is quite reminiscent of a reverse-sepulchritude transformation. or an evil sepulchritude.

the shirt even has black wings (inky wings per the inky theme of the attack) which is actually even more in keeping with noir's transform than PS's. so it's not like it has no symbol-relevance.

as an artist/storysmith i tend to think about stuff like that as much as i can. which is another way of saying i'm good at rationalizing random decisions i make.

they were absolutely not even remotely planned from the beginning or anywhere close for that matter.

wait let me copy something i wrote from somewhere else that might be informative.

it's about the DNA letters, the pesterchum name abbreviations, and how that led to the trolls.

The DNA connection began well before I ever even thought of the trolls.

I named EB, TT, TG, in that order. I noticed an unfolding pattern with the latter two, and then named GG to solidify this pattern.

I assumed EB was just a special case for whatever reason, much like he is in other ways. For instance, the other three all have close birthdays in December, while his is in April. I figured very early on that he would have an alt account to complete the pattern, but hadn't developed the plot device to explain the alt until the trolls surfaced.

The DNA connection with GT, TT, TG, GG I also noticed early on, and in fact largely precipitated the existence of the trolls, and was the sole reason for there being 12 of them. (12 remaining DNA letter combos, and some people theorized there would be 12 based on this before it was clear how many there were.) Additionally, the fact that there were 12 was what prompted the zodiac connection.

It may also be interesting to note that for GT, TG, TT, and GG, the like-letters are girls, and differing letters are boys, which correspond to chromosomes XY (male), and XX (female). Trolls do not follow this pattern because, first, there are only AA and CC left which would mean only 2 girls in the group ( :C ) and second, they aren't human, so their chromosomes probably work differently. For now, all we know is the girls begin with G, but the logic probably needs to be more elaborate than this if there are any more girls in the group.

There is further rationale for John's defection from the pattern, from GT to EB, which possibly will never be explained in the story. What caused him to defect was the trolls, a group ostensibly lead by CG, whose name obviously implies cancerous disruption within a genetic system, or a DNA code. His cancerous influence causes a defect in the full string of genetic characters, from GT TT TG GG | CG GC GA AG AC CA TA AT TC CT AA CC to EB TT TG GG | CG GC GA AG AC CA TA AT TC CT AA CC. This is the nature of cancer, to corrupt genetic data. There may be additional relevance to the fact that John defected to ectoBiologist, the name of a pseudo-science sounding similar to carcinoGeneticist. In fact, I believe this will prove to be relevant later on.

and i had to make a "doodle" that looked like a whimsical random sketch, but the tablet interpreted as a dutton head. so i think i wound up drawing about 30 or 40 quick random sketches on top of dutton's face before i got one that looked right, and i'm sure at some point in the process i stopped to think what an odd practice this was for a person to be engaged in out of context. (or even in context)

even though the interactive pages seem like a RADICAL DEVIATION in common storytelling practices, they're really not.

many of us have played hundreds of hours of RPGs like final fantasy doing the same thing, running around, talking to everybody in a town, making sure you don't miss anything.

i guess it's less unnerving in an RPG because that's A) what you're expecting to do, and B) what you're doing CONSTANTLY through the whole game, with little pockets of story progression interrupting now and then.

so keeping a reader/player comfortable is mostly about conforming to their expectations, and staying within the established parameters of the medium.

i guess i'm not that concerned with reader comfort! this isn't a luxury automobile. it's more like a rickety jeep, serviceable on an outrageous safari.

on some level i agree, but to scrap initiatives like that entirely goes against the grain of the experimental nature of this thing. (also in this case my "team" is really just me and gankro. there wasn't THAT much more effort involved than usual, save his coding efforts done mostly in tandem with the art.)

dramatically speaking, it would have been more powerful to arrange a hard wired animation set to cool music, and dictate exactly what the reader is supposed to see and learn about the story. but the downsides are you sacrifice the curveball element, and fail to push the envelope on the medium. i prefer keeping these upsides, even if just in small doses.

i found it kind of interesting to see the variety of reactions to that page, specifically that there appears to be a class of people who are grumpy about the concept, when faced with having to do something themselves to drive the story. which is a somewhat understandable reaction. if you go to a movie and all you want to do is tune out to what's on the screen and let the director do all the driving, you'd probably be perplexed or irritated if a controller popped out of the seat in front of you half way through and you had to control the characters for a while. but that's not quite what you're signing up for here. anything goes, and the only reason i don't do stuff like that more often is due to the labor involved.

but when i see that sort of reaction to it, it makes me think i should be doing it more. people get comfortable with the status quo very easily, even when that status quo itself isn't all that old (i've only been including these heavy duty flash animations in mspa for less than a year). meandering outside this comfort zone gets people agitated, and the more people get agitated the more i'm tempted to think i'm on the right track, or at least further exploration is warranted. sometimes a good idea has to be really rammed down people's throats for them to understand it's a good idea, because you'll always have to surmount their curmudgeonly resistance to innovation, and as always, the preposterous love affair the masses seem to have with mediocrity.

i doubt the story will ever address the details of their bonding process. if anything, it may touch on how they all met in the first place (and has already sort of, with john's time traveling package to jade)

most of the story so far has been a window into a group of friends whose relationships have already been well established for years and already have strong bonds of friendship. many things they say and allude to points to this strong preexisting bond.

part of introducing the trolls to the story has been taking on a new challenge, which is to document the process of the group of four kids making new friends (albeit in a pretty unusual fashion). we know the personalities of the four kids very well by this point, so now we're getting to see how those personalities mesh with new people outside their social bubble, and how in their own ways they're sort of reversing the antagonism of these self appointed adversaries and turning them into friends, even in spite of everyone's best efforts to avoid that outcome.

at the beginning of HS i put the word out i was looking for musicians, and about 40 or so got back to me over a day or two.

many of them kind of drifted away from the project or never made much in the first place, leaving behind a smaller core of very enthusiastic and talented participants, which is responsible for most of the music in HS so far. i added a few more people to the pool recently, since over time some more great musicians (mostly from the community) were clearly excited to make music and participate, so i said sure why not.

i wish i could use all the great stuff they make. but that's why i want to put out more albums, to get more of their work out in the open.

i wrote something "SERIOUS" about sbahj recently. here it is, pasted from elsewhere.

It's clearly rooted primarily in jackassery which no doubt is not for everyone but it's presence in the story does have an ACTUAL LITERARY PURPOSE.

It is an invention within the universe for the kids to reference amongst themselves endlessly. Friends on the internet do this all the time. Instead of using memes from reality, I made this one up as a satirical project of one of the characters. The strip provides the core of memes that fuels much of their banter, and that core is added to as I (Dave) make(s) more comics. Certain memes upon reaching a critical density begin to accumulate an entire vocabulary to slip into during casual banter amongst those familiar with it. That is what has happened, and the density is such that the vocabulary has even permeated the narrative itself.

Those who don't care for SBaHJ much or merely "put up" with its presence in HS most likely are not appreciating the fact that it is mostly another device employed for rigorous universe building. In no way is its attachment to HS just a vehicle for hocking it as one of my asinine side projects. If it strikes many as a viable standalone form of entertainment it is only because it has that effectively served my purpose for it, which is to build this universe.

i always tend to assume at least 99 out of 100 people will want nothing whatsoever to do with HS, whether due to its complexity, or its peculiar format.

and i keep being surprised that so many people keep tuning in. then again, i'm also surprised by how popular Lost is, when you might expect a show of such complexity would scare people off.

maybe what i'm discovering is people actually like complexity, and will even gravitate toward it, as long as it isn't a total train wreck. if you unapologetically tackle high complexity head on, and pull it off somewhat, it seems like people respond well to it. sure they may not understand it. (and if you've ever heard people speculate about Lost, they definitely don't) but they like it.

as for fluidity, i really don't know. that's not a property i'm cognizant of while working. i just try to make sure every page has some purpose, whether it's just funny or amusing, or advances the story in some way. the most important page is always the one i'm working on. i never put out pages just to take up space or kill time. i think if a story manages to be a succession of meaningful, entertaining events, then that fluidity happens automatically.

to tell you the truth it's statements like this that just make me want to stop using reader commands forever.

there are many types of objections like this pertaining to the format that get dredged up which are based on a complete misunderstanding about how user input works.

first point: when there are hundreds of commands, you have nearly every absurd idea imaginable to choose from. so what criteria should i use to select? how about ones that sync up better with ideas i've had, and help move the story? you suggest i do just the opposite. so i should ACTIVELY SUFFOCATE my own ideas in favor of RANDOM DUDE X's ideas, even though there are hundreds of RANDOM DUDE X's all making noise at once, and there is no particularly strong case to be made for any above the others? following your advice not only makes no sense from a creator's perspective, it would actually sabotage the story in the long run.

second point: reader commands are great for the story's early climb, establishing some elements, making something out of nothing, etc. they are not good for wrapping things up. in the early going, there is a huge amount of granularity to the action. pick this object up. put it over there. walk through that door. and so on. you just can't finish a story with these micro actions though. at some point you have to start speeding up, and tying loose ends. reader commands don't do that though. they will always speak in the language of micro actions, because that is pretty much the only thing a mock-player can do.

these are the remarks of someone who has spent HUNDREDS of hours thinking about these issues and trying to make it all work. people who say stuff like "give it back to the fans!" obviously haven't even spent a minute thinking about it. The fans were only ever in control in a limited way, and everything takes shape at my discretion. people just get really carried away with the whole "reader driven" idea and form these weird fantasies about how it works, and then take umbrage when my decisions are in violation of this fantasy protocol!

really the only thing i don't like about the format is it seems to lend itself to these misunderstandings.

"writing" sure is a weird verb to apply to problem sleuth. but ok we'll run with it.

generally i don't reach much further than the boundaries of my existing knowledge base for ideas. just because it's much faster that way. and if i'm doing "research" to get ideas, what would i even read? maybe pay a visit to the idea wing of the library?

homestuck has actually involved a fair amount of research, but usually a very specific and targeted kind. sometimes i can't believe the sort of things i find myself looking up for story purposes.

one example was when i was making the [S] Ascend page and started poring over GPS coordinates of real places in the world. like scouting out locations in the adirondacks park in new york for various waterfalls for a plausible location of rose's house. i settled on a pretty big waterfall called "rainbow falls" and found the exact gps coordinates for that and plugged it into WV's station terminal when he was taking off. the name of the falls became sort of relevant later, because when rose entered the medium her house then straddled a literal rainbow waterfall. i also looked for plausible coordinates for jade's island, and found this weird patch in the pacific ocean that looked like it had been edited out by the government or something. maybe it was! or maybe it was just a shallow, boxy look reef. didn't really matter, i was just looking for something mysterious. john has a real world location too. in fact, his real life address is a house that's for sale. he lives by a lake in washington called pipe lake, which his father probably chose for obvious reasons.